


Alex - Reboot

by orphan_account



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Avengers Family, Avengers Kids - Freeform, Avengers Tower, Domestic Avengers, F/M, Post-Avengers (2012)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-10
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-13 01:17:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5689045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My name is Alexandra Barton.<br/>I'm the daughter of the two probably most famous assassins - Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton.<br/>Still, I live a pretty normal live, considering my family are the Avengers and their children.<br/>But you can't just be a part of the Avengers in any kind of way without making enemies. And though I don't know my enemies yet, they know me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

I sigh as I watch the punching bag swing around in front of me. I reach out to stop it, then I get back to it, alternating between punching it rapidly and kicking until Jarvis silences the music to tell me dinner’s ready. I heave another sigh as I hold onto the bag, leaning my forehead against the leather for a moment while I catch my breath. Then I start unwrapping my hands and feet and put the bandages back into my box on the shelf by the door. I drink the rest of my water, wipe a towel across my face, put on my socks and get into the elevator. Once the doors close and the elevator starts moving, I lean my head against the wall and close my eyes for a moment. There was a reason I came down here and I still don’t really wanna think about it.   
When the elevator stops and I step into the living room, Lucy, already in her pajamas, immediately starts engaging me in a game of tag.

Lucy is Beth and Steve’s daughter. She was born almost three years ago, January fifth, as a surprise to everyone. She’s got an older brother, James, who turned nine in October.

So, right now I chase her through the whole room until I eventually pick her up and carry her to the couch, where she squirms until she drops down on Mason.

Mason and Victoria Stark, aka the wonder twins. They turned twelve this August and they’re so much like Tony, it’s scary sometimes. Mason can easily do my homework since he’s seven and Vic builds almost more impressing things than Tony and Bruce since she’s eight. They each skipped a class already and I’m sure if they grew up around people SHIELD tries to get rid of, the two of them could easily destroy the world if they wanted to.

I leave Lucy with Mason, who’s starting to tickle her, as I make my way to the huge table where most of the family’s already sitting, when Torunn comes out of the kitchen.

Torunn’s born three months after my first birthday and she’s got the whole deal: awesome scientist Mom and an asgardian thunder god Dad, which kinda makes her some kind of princess in Asgard, apparently. She also picked up a couple of nice tricks when she visits there, as she manages to… teleport (or whatever you wanna call it) herself, if she concentrates enough.

“Guys! Food!” she yells over the general noise, before sitting down while everyone gathers around the table as well. I sit down between her and my Mom and once Steve and Beth set the food on the table, the usual chaos begins of everyone talking at once and fighting about the most absurd things, but it helps me keep my mind off things.

At least until about an hour later when Lucy’s fast asleep on the couch and I volunteer to take her to bed, as I would too in a bit. So I bid my goodnights before I pick her up and get into the elevator with her. I step into their apartment with her snoring into my shoulder. I’m careful not to wake her when I lay her down, make sure her giraffe is tugged under her arm before pulling the blanket up to her shoulders. When I leave, I make sure her door stays open and the light in the hallway is on before I make my way into my own apartment, where I take a quick shower.

Eventually I curl up on my window sill with a blanket and a book, but I find myself not able to concentrate on whatever apocalyptic situation I’m reading about. I’m worried. My Dad’s on a mission in Amsterdam, for three weeks now. He was supposed to return three days ago, but we hadn’t had contact with him for the past nine days. But when asking SHIELD if they know anything, all they’ll say is ‘classified’. They won’t even tell Mom. She keeps saying ‘no news are good news’, but who’s she kidding? I mean, I know she’s just trying to keep me from worrying, but I know she’s losing her mind over this. She keeps driving to HQ or yelling at people on the phone to try and get _some_ kind of information, but nothing. And of course I worry just as much. I know what they’re doing on missions, I know the risks, have seen them come back more dead than alive a couple of times already. But that doesn’t change the fact that I worry every single time because just one slip and it’s over. So, who’s trying to tell me nine days of no contact are a good sign?

I’m startled when my phone buzzes on my nightstand. I close the book and stretch to reach it. I don’t have to look to know it’s Peter.

“What’s up?”

“Oh, you know, just the usual stalking.”

“Should I be scared you’re chilling under my window?” I ask, a small smirk on my lips.

“Yeah, right” I hear him chuckle, followed by silence. I’m not really in the mood to talk. “Hey, you’ll see, Clint’s gonna be just fine.”

“Yeah, right” it’s my time to say this. “Cause it’s completely normal that if you don’t hear anything for nine days straight everything is totally fine.”

“He came back from worse” I hear him say quietly after a moment.

“I know” I sigh and lean my head against the cool window, looking down at the still busy streets. “I just want him to come back already.”

“You’ll see” he says after a while and I can hear his grin. “In the end he’ll jump out of your cake tomorrow or something like that.”

“God, I don’t care if he’s here for my fucking birthday, you know that. I just want him to _be_ here, okay?” I… I just can’t stand people who know as much as I do about the current situation being so damn confident about everything when they have no clue. Even if it’s Peter.

“I know” he says quietly and I almost feel bad for snapping, but not really. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, really. I’m just tired. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Alright. Night, ninja” I hear him say and I respond with the usual “Night, nerd” before hanging up.

Looking at the clock I realize it’s only nine pm, but I honestly just want this day to be over, so I turn off the lights and get into bed. Of course I don’t fall asleep until hours later, not until I already ignored my Mom seeing if I was still awake in an attempt to talk to me.

When I wake up, it’s to Lucy’s extremely loud singing of Happy Birthday, singing louder than everybody else. I groan and burry my face into the pillow as I wait for them to finish. Of course when they do, Lucy’s jumping onto the bed and onto my back.

“Guys it’s too early.”

“Pf, it’s your tradition” I hear Torunn scoff, which reminds me to groan even more. Why do I just have to be the most awesome best sister in the book of sisters?

I mean, technically I’m not related to either of them, but who the hell cares, we’re basically siblings. And as the self-declared boss of the siblings (declared at age three), I had to start some kind of birthday tradition when Torunn turned five. I made Dad bake her a ton of cupcakes and forced pretty much everyone else to stuff the tower with balloons. Then in the morning I climbed on Thor’s shoulders and he and I went to wake Torunn, both of us a balloon and cupcake in our hands as we started to sing Happy Birthday as loud and off key as possible. The rest of the day was spent playing every single game anyone could come up with. At some point Victoria, who was two at the time, threw a cupcake at Mason, who threw another one at Torunn, who poured orange juice over me and I may or may not have pushed her head into the cake before Dad could pull me away. Torunn and I still agree that this was about the best birthday ever in the tower.

And so Torunn dutifully kept this going, even if we don’t all spend the whole day together we at least always wake each other like that and end the day with a big dinner and a movie night.

“Come on, can we please start to stop waking me up, like, permanently?”

Of course we can’t. When I try to pull the blanket over my head I know it’s a lost fight as Lucy and James keep pulling it back until they have it off the bed. I curl up at the sudden cold, but Torunn, Mason and Victoria just grab my hand and foot and start pulling me off the bed until I hit the floor face first.

“Ouch.”

When they realize that I won’t move they pull me up again and shove me into the elevator. On the way there someone ties a balloon to my wrist and I have absolutely no idea who. Once we step out again I’m basically pushed into one big embrace from the rest of the family. Eventually they all let go of me and that’s when I realize Tony wasn’t in on the group hug because he got me a steaming cup of coffee.

“Oh, thank god” I mumble and take the cup out of his hand and let him hug me lazily as I finally start to wake up.

Everything’s like always, actually, me still half asleep while most of the others are already fighting and yelling and laughing and just trying to hurry up so we get to school in time. The only thing off is my Dad not being here.

Eventually I’m actually awake and we all go down to our respective levels to get ready for school. Torunn and I usually manage to be the first ones to be ready to go and we usually have a couple minutes to just watch the chaos of Lucy trying to follow James to school or Tony and Pepper arguing in the manner of “No way they’re gonna take this – _insert name of latest invention_ \- to school” and “But Pep-“ and “Don’t you ‘Pep’ me now” which follows with a lengthy discussion about why the hell they won’t take some mutant robot dog to school, while Mason and Victoria just quietly make their way to school, mostly with the invention in tow.   
Today I make myself another cup of coffee to go while Lucy runs around like crazy.

“Let’s go” Torunn eventually says and we get into the elevator. We step out again just as Peter walks through the door, shaking the snow out of his hair – he obviously forgot about the beanie in his pocket. He’s one of the few people to be let into the tower without any further ado.

“Hey” he greets us, a wide grin on his face as he fist bumps with Torunn before hugging the hell out of me.

“Happy Friday thirteenth” he says grinning as he pulls back. He then pulls a box out of his bag and into my hand.

“Wow, since when can you wrap gifts?” I ask with a smirk as I start to open the shop-wrapped box.

“Eh, since always?” he laughs and waits for me to put on the bronze bracelet shaped like an arrow lying inside of the box.

“Thank you” I say with a smile and hug him. When I pull away I put the box in my bag.

“My little ninja’s finally sixteen” Peter says, putting his hand over his heart mockingly.

“Dude, you’re like three months older than me” I tell him as I pull the beanie out of his pocket and onto my head.

“Come on” I hear Torunn say and the three of us make our way to school.

School goes on about as always, way too many people making a way too big deal out of someone having birthday, but to my surprise even Flash told me something that’d probably come close to ‘happy birthday’ and he didn’t even try to start a fight. But I’m still glad when Peter and I finally get out. Torunn’s already home, but I just don’t really feel like going yet, so Peter and I just walk through the city with no real destination in mind.

I love how time just flows away when I’m with Peter. Like, five minutes ago we stepped out of school and now we’ve already walked through central park. Or that I completely stop worrying about Dad when I’m with him. He almost always knows what to say to make me laugh, no matter what’s on my mind.   
And I just really love this guy.   
Peter and I, we’re best friends since… ever. I seriously can’t remember a single day that I haven’t at least talked to him. I’ve spent about just as much time with him growing up as I did with my whole family, he’s basically my brother.

“Ugh, I’m freezing” he says, rubbing his hands together. He doesn’t watch where he’s going and before I can say anything he’s slipping on ice and in an attempt not to fall he holds onto my arm, but in the end we’re both lying in a heap on the frozen ground laughing our asses off. A couple of people walking by are laughing as well and I spot at least one guy taking a photo because it’s just so hilarious to see one of the Avengers’ kids falling on her ass. It usually annoys me like hell to see pictures of me or the others floating round the internet or something, but I honestly don’t care right now, it’s just this one guy and Peter and I are having fun.

Eventually we get back on our feet and decide we’re gonna visit Thor at work.

Jup. Asgardian thunder god giant Thor, that big, fluffy giant has a job. At Starbucks. And it’s still fucking hilarious.   
At some point there weren’t really any battles for him to fight or babies to take care of. So, when James went to school too, Thor followed the amazing and of course very serious advice my Dad gave him and got a job at one of the Starbucks’ close to the tower.

“Hey, man” Peter greets him once it’s our turn and none of us can stop to grin. It’s just always damn funny to see the giant in his green apron with his Rapunzel hair tied back.  

“I thought you were home already” he says as he starts to make us the usual.

“Nah, we wanted to visit you” Peter says.

Thor chuckles as he hands us the coffee.

“When are you getting off?” I ask, warming my hands on my hot and _free_ coffee. The best part about him working here, and probably the reason why my Dad suggested this in the first place – he’s just as addicted to coffee as I am.

“In ten minutes” Thor says after checking his watch. I nod before I remember the line behind us.

“We better get going, you got work to do, Rapunzel” I say, grinning as we turn to leave. “See ya” we call over our shoulders before walking out of the door and back into the cold.

We keep walking through the city until it gets dark, until we’re basically in a snow storm. So when we get back to the tower, we shake off all the snow before I pull the beanie off my head and throw it back at Peter. I was expecting him to catch it, but instead it hits him square in the face.

I laugh as he glares at me. A second later he tries to grab me, but I start running to the already opened elevator. I step inside and push the button for the main level, but when Peter steps inside too, I duck under his arm and out just before the doors close. But my super awesome plan is basically useless because Peter gets out too and so he chases me up the stairs until we push through the door to the main level, where we stop dead in our tracks when we see everyone.

The first thing I notice is Torunn turning away when she sees us and walking over to Mason and Vic, who are hugging by the couch. That itself is making me suspicious already.

Then I see my Mom sitting at the table with Pepper and Steve. Pepper’s eyes are red and she holds my Mom’s hand. Steve’s looking like he’s about to cry too when he sees me, but what makes my heart really skip a beat is my Mom. She doesn’t look up from the spot on the table she’s fixated, but she’s biting her lip and though I have never seen my Mom cry, I know she has and right now she’s just trying not to shed anymore tears.

This is bad news.                                

I notice James, Lucy and Beth are missing. Tony’s leaning against the counter, running a hand through his hair. When he looks at me, he looks like he’s on the verge of tears too. Jane definitely is crying, but she’s trying to hide it as best as she can.

The only one looking somewhat in check of his emotions is Bruce, though that’s probably just due to his ability to control the Hulk.

“What’s going on?” I hear Peter ask, but I think even he already knows. I close my eyes when I see Fury walk around the corner. I don’t wanna see him and I don’t wanna hear it.

“Miss Barton” he starts and I can already feel the tears trying to slip. “I’m very sorry, but your father has been ambushed… He didn’t make it.”

He keeps talking after that but I can’t hear him anymore. I drop my backpack to the floor and then Peter tries to hug me, but I turn away and walk up the stairs towards the roof. The only thing I can hear is my heart beating in my ears, getting louder with every step as breathing gets harder.

By the time I’ve reached the roof, I can barely breathe. The cold wind hitting my face helps, but it’s still not quite enough. Eventually my knees hit the ground and now I’m finally crying. I’m sobbing and gasping for breath. After a while I just curl up on the roof, lying in the snow.

I don’t know how long it takes until Peter shows up. He doesn’t try to get me back inside, just wraps his coat around my shoulders and holds me close, his hand running through my hair. He keeps whispering how sorry he is and that everything’s going to be okay, but I don’t believe that.

My Dad is dead.


	2. Putting the Fun in funeral

I wake up to hear my Mom scream. She’s having a nightmare again.

Most of the time I barely notice my parents’ nightmares, usually only when they just came back from a mission. But over the past seven days I hear her a lot.

I rub my eyes for a moment before I stand up and walk to my parents’… my Mom’s room. She’s clutching my Dad’s pillow in one hand as her other one’s underneath her own. I turn on the light in the room and move to the bed.

“Mom” I say firmly and shake her by the shoulders until her eyes snap open. I lean back enough that the elbow she’s throwing back misses me, but I see the knife she’s pulled from under her pillow too late, and so she cuts the palm of my left hand before she realizes she’s awake.

She immediately drops the knife and grabs my hand to see how deep of a cut it is. It isn’t a really deep cut, but it still hurts when she presses some tissues into my hand.

“Shit, I’m so sorry” she keeps saying.

“Mom, it’s okay” is what I keep telling her. “It’s no big deal, it’s fine.”

I clench my fist to keep the tissues in place before I hug her tightly.

But we don’t talk after that. We barely talked the past few days, mostly because I don’t really wanna talk to anyone in general. I just don’t see how talking about all this would help me in any kind of way. So I don’t. My Dad is dead, one of the most important people in my life is just gone. How is talking about it going to help? It won’t. He’ll still be gone.   
But I still keep thinking he’s gonna come back any minute, walking through the door and being just like ‘What did I miss?’ And I… I don’t know if I would feel any better if we at least had a body to bury, but we don’t. Apparently that ambush included an explosion in an apartment that simply wiped him off the face of earth. So there’s not even proof of his death, he’s simply gone.

Eventually, after bandaging my hand, I get back into my own room and though it’s only around four am, I don’t think I can go back to sleep, so I grab my blanket off my bed and lay down on my windowsill. I watch as the streets below grow even busier and the sun rises and the snow keeps falling.

When someone steps into my room I first think it’s Mom, but when I hear him throw his suit jacket on my bed and kick off his shoes I know it’s Peter.

“Hey” he mumbles, then he lifts the blanket and lays down beside me. I’m glad he doesn’t wanna talk any more than that.

After a while Torunn comes by as well to tell me I have to get ready. By the time I stand up she’s already laid some clothes for me out on my bed. I’m grateful, actually. So I mumble “Thanks” when she and Peter get back upstairs and I put on the pants and blouse before joining everyone as well.

Everybody’s dressed in black, even Lucy though she doesn’t even know what all this shit is about, all she knows is that uncle Clint won’t come back this time.

“Let’s go” Steve says after a moment of everyone being silent and staring at me or Mom. So we all make our way down to the garage to get into the cars to get to DC because for some reason the empty coffin can’t even be buried in New York but _has_ to be in DC with all the other dead SHIELD agents.

I’m glad Bruce is driving the car Peter, Mom and I are sharing with him, and not Mom. But even though Bruce tries to make conversation and Peter wants to help him, they stop trying after a while and so we spend most of the four hour drive in silence. Though I try to focus on the music on the radio, it still feels more like an eight hour trip.

Once we do arrive, it’s snowing like crazy and I’ve got the feeling all of SHIELD is assembled on this giant graveyard. As soon as we get out of the cars, umbrellas are handed out and I follow the rest towards the front row. I can see Steve shaking hands and talking with a couple agents before a bunch start to come over to tell us their condolences. Whenever one tries to shake my hand, I just glare at them or their hand until they move on or Peter just shakes their hand for me. I don’t want this shit. I don’t want their faked pity, I don’t want their stupid rehearsed speeches, I don’t wanna _be_ here.

Peter shifts the umbrella slightly and puts his arm around me when the wind picks up. I close my eyes for a moment when the wind blows snow in my face.

Since I was able to walk, my Dad used to take me and Mom to central park once it snowed and we’d just spend the whole day there, throwing snow at each other, building snowmen that were supposed to look like one in our family, make snow angels or go sleighing. Once it was dark, he’d always buy me a hot chocolate and carry me back home on his shoulders, where I pretty much always fell asleep within just a few minutes.

And now he’s dead.

I open my eyes when I feel my Mom’s hand on my arm, and I pull my hand out of my pocket to grab hers. That’s when I feel a few tears running over my cheek and I quickly wipe them away. Then there are a couple agents I think I’ve seen before carrying the empty coffin to the hole in the ground, which is Fury’s cue to start talking bullshit.

He talks about what a great man my Dad was and how great he was on missions and bla bla bla. I was prepared for this bullshit talk, but when Fury _dares_ to call Dad his friend I have enough of this.

“This is bullshit” I hear myself say when he makes one of his dramatic pauses. “He wasn’t your friend, he worked for you and that got him killed. You killed him.”

I… I didn’t actually mean to make a scene at my Dad’s funeral, but I couldn’t have him saying this, I just couldn’t.

My Mom squeezes my hand then and when I look at her there is the smallest, tiniest hint of a smile on her face. I take a deep breath when Fury starts talking again, trying to talk himself out of the responsibility over my Dad’s death, but I don’t listen to whatever bullshit he has to say now. I let go of my Mom’s hand, slip out from underneath Peter’s arm and walk away, past my whole family, past all of SHIELD, everyone’s eyes on me until I’m far enough away from all this.

My Dad wasn’t his friend. All he ever did was his job, a job he’s been basically forced into by a fuck-up of situations when he was young. Just because he’s got a ‘never seen before skillset’ as Fury put it, doesn’t mean he’s invincible. He’s not some god or was scientifically enhanced, he was just a guy with a bow and arrow! His luck had to inevitably run out some day.   
What made him a great man was him being a great Dad, a great husband, a great uncle and a great friend. Was him managing this dangerous life, all their enemies, all the horrible things they’ve done in the past and still having a family in all this. Despite all this, despite how broken both of them are, they both managed to keep each other and me alive for sixteen years. That’s what makes my parents, what made my Dad great and not blindly following Fury’s orders. Yes, he saved so many people, but this only made him great at his job, not a great man and definitely not Fury’s friend.   

I don’t even know for how long I’ve walked. Eventually I decide to head back when I notice my feet getting numb from the cold. I bet they’re done with the funeral by now.

Man I must’ve walked far, but at least I remember the way I came from. When I round the next corner I already spot Torunn from a distance. Once I reach her, she holds the umbrella over both of our heads and I feel the sudden urge to just hug her. Only then I remember what a giant she actually is. She’s even taller than Peter and he’s already a head taller than me. Actually, the only one I know of who’s taller than Torunn is her Dad and just so Steve. She’s been taller than me since I was seven.

“Fury couldn’t talk himself out of that one” she says after a moment and I actually have to smile against her shoulder at that. “Come on.”

So we make our way back to the rest, which takes us a while but eventually we’re back at the now empty graveyard. The only one still standing at the grave is my Mom. I heave a sigh and walk across the snow until I stand next to her. She’s crying, but she doesn’t move, she’s just staring at the empty coffin sitting in the ground.

“Can we go?” I ask after a while, barely audible. I don’t wanna be here any longer. I just wanna go home and bury myself in my bed for a while. I can see her nod her head and after a moment she turns away from the grave, puts a hand on my shoulder and we start moving back to the cars, where the others are still waiting. On our way I can see Agent Pierce and Sitwell talking in a distance, and when we walk past them, they’re looking at us, but my Mom isn’t. Looking at them I see Pierce nodding at me in… consideration or whatever you wanna call it, but what freaks me out is Sitwell smiling. It’s just for a short moment, but it’s really damn creepy. I can’t stand these guys anyways, they were handling the mission, they were supposed to make sure there wouldn’t be any ‘situations’. Good job, guys.

I try to stop thinking about all this, but it’s not that easy when I know I’m getting in a car right now that’s gonna be on the road for another four hours, in complete silence.

When I look out of the window I can see Sitwell _and_ Pierce smiling as we drive off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/set?.locale=de&id=187982069


	3. The mission

The next few weeks are… I don’t know. They suck. I keep wishing my Dad to come back, but he doesn’t. When I wake up to my Mom’s screaming and I go to check on her, he’s still not there like he’s supposed to. He’s gone. He’s just gone.

I don’t join the others for Christmas. Not really. It’s not really Christmas anyways. We try to keep it up somewhat for Lucy because she just doesn’t really get all that yet, but no one’s really in the mood for Christmas. So instead Mason joins me in a marathon of the most non Christmas-y movies we can come up with while Mom pretty much spends three days in the gym, with a couple of forced movie breaks.

New Year’s is completely ignored by me, though Peter still comes over and I seriously consider drinking myself in a coma when the fireworks start.

What I really force myself to do is get up on Lucy’s birthday.

Last night, long after she’s supposed to be asleep, she sneaked into my room with her giraffe and blanket and sat down on the windowsill opposite of me.

“Do you hate me?” she asked when I wanted to know why she’s awake.

“I couldn’t hate you, don’t ever think that” I immediately tried but I still don’t think she quite believed me. So I pulled her into my lap and hugged her and tried to explain everything to her. “I just really miss my Dad, you know?” I hate that I was about to cry again.

“Why isn’t he coming back?” she asked quietly. She knows he isn’t gonna come back but nobody told her why. And I didn’t wanna be the one to do it either because I don’t want to _hear_ it either. But I still made myself say something, though the tears were already falling again.

“He just isn’t, he… he’s just gone. And I’m just… I’m just trying to get used to this somehow and I’d rather be alone for a while, okay? That doesn’t mean I’d hate you, alright?”

I know it was a lousy explanation, but she still nodded her head after a while. When she looked at me, she wiped the tears on my face away with her tiny hands before pressing a kiss to my cheek.

“Go to bed” I told her with a rather forced smile and when she stood up and was about to go, she pressed her giraffe, which would usually never leave her hands, into my own, then she ran out of my room before I could even protest.

So now as Mason stands in my door asking if I’d join them, I look at the giraffe in my hands and nod. I follow him into the elevator, though without the giraffe, where everyone else is already waiting and we go to wake up Lucy, though the Happy Birthday singing isn’t very happy. But we all still try to make it seem like a normal birthday, at least to her.

But I just can’t keep this up all day. I can’t. I manage until she’s had her cake, but after all the games and everything I just need to breathe. So I put on my shoes and get on the roof, sitting down on the edge, my feet dangling in the air and my chin resting on my arms on the railing. I close my eyes for a while, just let the cold wind and snow/rain hit my face as I take deep breaths. It’s damn loud on the streets, but up here it’s always kinda muffled and I don’t know why but it always calms me down for some reason. Another thing I picked up from my Dad.

When I was five or six, I don’t quite remember, my Mom was on a mission and that was about the first time I can remember to wake up to one of my parents’ nightmares. So, when I heard my Dad scream, I was pretty scared, but I still grabbed my plush owl, blanket and flashlight and walked to my door. When I peeked out into the hallway, my Dad was rushing past me without even noticing me and when he opened the door to the stairwell, I followed him. I slipped into my shoes and followed him upstairs once I figured out he wasn’t going downstairs. Eventually I ended up at the door of the roof where I usually wasn’t allowed on my own, but Jarvis still let me through. I remember that I was scared like hell up there in the dark, but when I saw my Dad sitting on the edge, I still walked over to him and asked why he screamed.

“It was just a bad dream, I didn’t wanna wake you.” Eventually he just pulled me on his lap and wrapped the blanket tighter around me and we just stayed there, sitting on the roof in the middle of the night, staring at the lit city until I must’ve fallen asleep up there. And I don’t know why, but I stopped being scared to go up there. I always go to the roof if I had a bad dream or got worried about one of their missions or stressed out because of school. I don’t know why, it just helps.

Not so much today, though.   
I still can’t believe he’s supposed to be dead, it just seems so unreal. Mostly because we buried air instead of a body, because I don’t have any actual proof I can look at of him being dead. There’s no proof, I just have to take it on blind faith that it’s true.

I take another deep breath and open my eyes when the rain starts to pick up. It’s mostly rain by now, barely any snow.

I’m completely soaked by the time I hear an umbrella open back by the door.

“Hey” I hear Victoria say, her voice shaking as she holds the umbrella over my head and stands beside me, clutching the railing till her knuckles turn white.

“You don’t have to stand here” I tell her with a smirk I can’t suppress at the horrified look on her face. She’s terrified of heights.

“Nah, I’m good…” she tries to convince herself. I chuckle and decide to spare her from a heart attack by getting up and stepping a bit away from the roof’s edge.

“You know you don’t gotta do this all day. We all get it when you guys need a break. I just think it’d be better if you didn’t stay in the rain 24/7, you know?”

I just nod and follow her back inside, get into dry clothes and join the others again for the rest of the day.

Later that night I can’t sleep, no matter what, so after about four hours of trying, I get up again and walk across the hallway to my Mom’s room. As soon as the door opens the light on her bedside table turns on and I shuffle over to the bed. Neither of us say anything as I crawl under the covers and cuddle up to her. None of us talk and none of us sleep, but it’s fine, actually. At least she’s still here.

.

Of course I catch a cold for sitting in the rain for days, but I’m actually kinda glad about that – it spares me the first week of school, which I really don’t need right now. Also I’ve got another excuse to stay in my room all day. Plus Steve comes by with his super-duper-homemade-1942-get-well-right-now soup, which one simply can’t refuse.

But over that week I realize that I need to know more about this mission. If I can’t see his corpse as proof then at least I wanna know how that happened. I don’t just wanna be told ‘hey your Dad got ambushed, whoopsie’. I wanna know what happened and how this could happen. So on Saturday I ask my Mom if I can read through the mission details.

“Why?”

“I just wanna try and get what could’ve gone wrong… Nobody told me anything, I just wanna know what he had to do.”

My Mom seems to think about it for a while, but eventually she agrees, probably hoping it’ll help me somewhat get along with all this. When she comes back out of their office, she hands me a tablet on which all the info’s on before she hugs me tightly and presses a kiss to my forehead.

After a while I decide to read it on the roof, so once I’m sitting in my usual spot, I unlock the tablet and begin reading.

Dad was supposed to take down some kind of Dutch mafia called ‘Wij nemen’ which is mostly known for selling people as well as other ‘goods’. But he wasn’t supposed to kill them, his mission was to bring the leader as well as the most valuable members of the group to SHIELD for interrogation about the whereabouts of all the hostages they’ve taken over the past twelve years.

Other than this description there are two more files. The first one includes all the main personalities, as well as my Dad’s alias to infiltrate the group. It’s all just a bunch of mostly Dutch names, as well as their occupations within the group, but those are the people SHIELD wanted because if they were gone, the whole group would come crumbling down.  

So. I know for a fact that Dad managed to bring far more people to SHIELD than just five. I mean, yeah, the group is way bigger than just five people, but still there would never be enough of them around Dad to kill him, would there? Even if his cover was blown? He’s been on so many far more dangerous missions and came back every single time. Hell, he fought aliens and a mad robot army and made it out alive, so what the hell could’ve possibly gone wrong on this one?

The other file is a video, a surveillance video showing a street and an apartment building. Two women and a man – Postma, Mol and Kujipers – cross the street and enter the building. A few seconds later they can be seen through a window in the top apartment. Two minutes later my Dad crosses the road and meets up with them inside the apartment. When they can no longer be seen through the window, the video skips the next 78 minutes, which is when the three walk back out on the road again – though I think Mol is limping – followed a second later by an explosion inside the apartment. When the apartment is standing in flames and people begin to panic on the streets the video ends.

I nearly drop the tablet off the roof when suddenly Peter’s sitting next to me.

“Fuck, don’t scare me like that!” How have I not even heard him?

“I wasn’t trying to” he says and starts running his hand over my back. “What’re you watching?”

“Surveillance video of Dad’s mission” I sigh. He reaches out to take the tablet from me, but waits in a silent question until I hand it to him with another sigh. I lean my head against his shoulder when he presses play and I watch the whole thing again.

“That’s it?” he asks once it finished. “That’s SHIELD’s proof of his death? Anything could’ve happened in those 78 minutes!”

“Yeah, but apparently that’s enough for them.”

I was thinking the same thing. Mol is Postma’s personal torture specialist, I read what SHIELD found out about her, which is a lot, but she can’t be better than my Mom, she just can’t. And my Dad is able to win a fight against my Mom (though she wins more often than not), so why the hell couldn’t he win against three people? He fought armies for fuck’s sake!

Before I can delve into this even more, Peter nudges me with his elbow to show me something on the tablet I haven’t noticed yet. “Why’s the webcam on?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/set?.locale=de&id=188379354


	4. Why me?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://daughter-of-two-assassins.tumblr.com/

Peter and I didn’t figure out why the webcam was on but we dismissed it soon enough, instead spending pretty much the whole rest of Saturday watching movies. But as soon as I wake up on Sunday the belated rage over that video settles in and so I change into shorts and a top and hit the gym.

Once I’m down there I wrap my hands and ankles and start hitting the punching bag in a Captain America fashion.

Why in the holy hell is this stupid video enough proof for SHIELD to declare my Dad for dead? It’s a skipped video with no proof whatsoever about my Dad being killed. None. Why the hell aren’t they checking some kind of trace? Why is this all they need to say he’s dead? Why?

The punching doesn’t really help cool down my anger, it rather just makes it all worse.

“Wanna be alone?” I hear Steve’s voice all of a sudden.

“No” I grunt as I throw another punch. I don’t wanna keep him from his own workout… or anger managing.

“Wanna talk?” he asks by the time he’s reached me, holding the punching bag steady.

“No” I repeat, but after a few more punches I stop, catching my breath.

“Wanna spar?” he then asks after a moment of thought.

“Yeah, actually.”

If you think about it, it does sound kinda weird for a sixteen years old to be asked by her not related uncle if she wants to fight him a bit. But it does sound about just as weird if it’s the sixteen years old girl asking her parents if they wanna fight, so... But considering my family consists of super soldiers, gods, rage monsters, assassins, geniuses and their spawn it suddenly sounds less weird… considering.

And so we end up throwing punches at each other and trying to get the other one to hit the mat first. When I try to kick him in the side, he grabs my foot and instead tries to throw a punch at me, but I grab his arm with both of my hands. Though he throws me off balance and onto the mat, I manage to get my foot against his shoulder while he’s hovering over me. In the long haul I’d lose in this position, but before that can happen, I elbow him in the arm he’s steadying himself with, throwing him enough off balance that I can push him off me and onto his back by the foot on his shoulder. I roll along on top of him, his arm still in my hold, and move my foot from his shoulder to his neck. Of course I don’t put any weight on it, but if this were an actual fight I could easily crush his windpipe this way, at least enough to get total advantage of the situation.

“One for me” I say, grinning down to him until he taps the mat three times.

“Yeah, one for you” he agrees, grinning as well as we get back up and start again.

We keep going for a really long time, and I actually do feel better afterwards. Later that day, when I ask my Mom how she feels about the video, she tells me she watched the whole thing multiple times and nothing happened in these 78 minutes, that we’ll never know what the hell happened inside the apartment and I can tell it hurts her just as much as it hurts me that we’ll probably never know how he died.

So in the end, I just sneak back into my Mom’s bed later on cause I really can’t sleep, partly because of me going back to school tomorrow and I really don’t want to. 

But of course eventually the alarm clock beeps.

 _“I don’t wanna”_ I whine into her shoulder in Russian.

 _“You gotta”_ she whispers, her hand running through my hair. I groan for a while longer, but eventually I actually do get up and get dressed. And I get upstairs and I eat breakfast with the rest of the family and I get into the elevator with Torunn and I already wanna get back in my bed. But I can’t do that and so I let Peter sling his arm around my shoulder and we walk to school. Which is total bullshit.   
It’s no secret that my Dad’s dead, it’s been all over the news. But it still sucks. I ignored all the texts or any kind of condolences people from school deemed necessary to tell me. Torunn told me that it was bad, everybody kept annoying her the whole week, but I didn’t expect it to be like that. I’ve got the feeling every single one in this school is either telling me how sorry they are, if I’m okay or they just stare at me pitying and mumbling. Even the teachers do that and okay, maybe some of them really mean it, but barely any of them know me or have anything to do with me, they’re all just pretentious and fucking annoying and I am really, honestly considering to just start a fight, but not even Flash is being his usual asshole self. It all just fucking sucks.

And of course today’s the longest school day Peter and I got, so once we get out (Torunn’s been home for two hours already, lucky her) it’s already starting to get dark. But we still walk, I need some air.

“You okay?” he asks for the hundredth time today and I look at him, again for the hundredth time, with a face that basically says ‘what do you think?’

“Sorry” he mumbles and tries to wrap his arm around my shoulder again, but I shake him off.   
“Alex…”

“No, I just – “I stop myself before I can snap again, as I can feel tears stinging my eyes again. I cross my arms in front of my open coat – of course I grabbed the one with the broken zipper today. Peter stops trying then, but I can see him stare at me worriedly out of the corner of my eye. I don’t get to comment on it though when someone grabs for both me and Peter, covering our mouths and pulling us into an alley.

I react immediately, biting into the hand as hard as I can. I hear the man shout and I taste blood, but he doesn’t let go. Not until I kick hard against his knee. Something cracks, his leg gives in and he lets go of me, dropping to the floor. I turn and hit him in the head with my backpack, knocking him out. Thank god books are this heavy.   
Then I see Peter, getting the hell beaten out of him by the other guy. But before I can get to him, another guy grabs my coat collar. I don’t even know where he came from, but I pull my arm out of my coat before he can grab me for real. While he still holds on to the coat, I’m still holding on to the other arm of it and I wrap the coat around his neck, kick him in the stomach, pull his head down and slam it against my knee. It hurts, but he drops to the ground and that’s when I see a black car roll up in front of the alley. But I don’t wait for anyone to get out, I gotta help Peter. The guy’s kicking him in the rips and I know I can’t just push him off. So I run to him, jump up to push myself off the wall to get high enough so I can wrap my legs around his neck and fling him to the ground and punch him in the throat once I sit up, keeping him on the ground for now.

I try to pull Peter up to his feet then, but then there are two guys grabbing me, carrying me away and I don’t know what to do. I’m kicking and squirming and screaming and just trying to get maybe one arm free, but nothing. One of them is holding my upper body and I’m kicking him _and_ the guy trying to grab my legs, I even manage to hit him in the face, but he just keeps trying and eventually he’s holding onto my legs. The only thing I can still do is bite the one behind me, but he’s wearing a thick leather jacket that I can’t bite through and I can’t reach his hands. I try to head butt him, but I only hit him in the chest as they try to carry me towards the car. So all I can still do is scream, yelling for them to stop, for help, just screaming as I keep struggling against them. Peter’s gotten up by now, trying to help me, but he’s quickly punched in the face by the guy previously kicking him, hitting the ground a second later and having a gun in his face.

“No!” I keep screaming over and over, struggling even more now, but still to no avail. Peter stays on the ground, but he keeps staring at me in horror. But after a moment he yells at them to stop and a second later I realize what he means when someone presses a cloth hard against my face, covering my mouth and nose and now I really start to panic. I’m trying to bite the hand but it doesn’t leave and while I still hear Peter yelling and see him getting a gun pressed to his head, black spots start to creep over my vision until I pass out.

* * *

 

Peter watches as these guys carry an unconscious Alex into their car. The one holding the gun to his head moves then, turning the gun and hitting him once in the head with it, nearly knocking him out. While his eyes start to focus again, he sees him getting to the car as well and he starts to stand up. He’s standing when the car starts speeding away and he sprints after it, as fast as he can, but of course he can’t catch it. But even though he’s been hit in the head multiple times, he still manages to think of taking pictures of the car before it rounds the corner and is completely out of his sight.

“Fuck” he whispers, tears starting to fill his eyes as it starts to settle in what just happened. He takes a deep breath then, an attempt to slow down is rapid heartbeat and get a clear head, which doesn’t quite work, he’s still dizzy as hell, but he’s gotta get back to the tower.

He hurries back to the alley, grabs his and Alex’s bags, her coat and starts running as fast as he still can to the tower, which is thankfully not that far away anymore.

He’s back there in record time, considering his current state. When he steps out of the elevator, the only ones sitting at the huge table are Bruce and Natasha. As soon as she sees him Natasha seems to have a pretty exact idea about what happened, even before Bruce asks, while he urges Peter to sit down. Bruce is already starting to take care of the wound on Peter’s temple when he finally catches his breath to talk, but just as he’s about to, Natasha interrupts him, her voice unexpectedly calm.

“What’d they look like?” she asks, her voice quiet and her hands clenched into fists.

“Jarvis, get the others” Bruce says, just as quiet as Peter starts stammering his answer, still shocked.

“I…I don’t know, they were just guys, it was dark, they jumped us.”

“How many?”

“I… I don’t know, four or five? They… they knocked her out and put her in a car.”

“Who got knocked out?” Tony asks from the elevator.

“Holy shit, Peter, what happened?” Torunn is already sitting next to Peter, looking at her beat-up friend before he could even answer.

“Some guys jumped us, they… they took Alex.”

While the whole rest of the family starts losing their shit, Natasha stays creepily calm.

“You got the license plate?”

Peter nods, pulls out his phone and hands it to her so she can look at the photos of the car.

“She still got her phone?” Victoria asks then.

“I think… She didn’t drop it” Peter answers, but he sounds very unsure, so Vic and Torunn start searching through Alex’ coat and backpack and luckily they don’t find it.  

“Then we can track her” Victoria says.

“Unless they ditched her phone” Natasha interrupts her, looking back up from Peter’s. “They’re blurred, I can’t read the plate” she says, regarding the photos. Before Peter can plummet into a fit of self-blame for not remembering the license plate, Mason already took the phone and starts towards the elevator.

“I can fix that” he says, prompting everyone else to follow him, until they’re in the Big Lab. “Dad, track her phone” he tells him, but Tony’s already on it. The next few minutes is just silent waiting as The Wonder Twins start working on the photos of the car so they can run a search of this license plate throughout the city, while Tony tries getting a location from Alex’s phone.

“Are you alright?” Jane asks Natasha quietly, who’s silently standing behind the Stark trio, watching them work.

“I’m fine.” Her voice is steady, calm and focused. Her training is forced back into place – she’s emotionally distancing herself at the moment, her only focus on the mission: getting her daughter back.

“Hey, this isn’t your fault” Torunn tells Peter quietly, who only nods slowly.

“They just took her” he mumbles, still not looking at anything, really. Torunn hugs him carefully.

“We’ll find her” she whispers.

They all jump somewhat when one of the computers beeps.

                “Got her” Tony exclaims and immediately Natasha is hovering above the screen.

                “She moving?” Steve asks, but Natasha shakes her head.

                “We got the plate” Vic says then.

                “Jarvis, run a search for that car” Tony orders, but Jarvis is already on it.

While they’re waiting for something to come up, Natasha is on her way out of the room.

                “Where are you going?” Pepper asks her.

“This is taking me too long. I’m following the phone’s signal, see if she’s there.”

“I’ll come with you” Steve decides. “Don’t even argue.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

The two of them grab a gun each before heading to the garage where they get into Natasha’s car and she speeds off through the busy streets, ignoring more red lights than she cares to count.

When they reach the phone’s location, they climb out of the car at a very secluded part at the Hudson. With no sign of the car or Alex.

Natasha closes her eyes for one second, takes one deep breath. Then she takes her phone out of her pocket to see Tony having sent her the exact location of the phone as well as the info that the car is nowhere to be seen anywhere around New York. Natasha walks along the river, following the location until her phone tells her she’s standing right in front of it. And she’s standing at the edge of the river.

                “There’s nothing here” Steve says as he joins her at the edge, after looking around for a while. It takes him a second to realize. “The phone’s down there?”

Natasha slowly nods her head.

“And my daughter could be too.”

                “Natasha…” Steve tries, but she shakes her head, already taking off her coat.

                “We don’t know what kind of people took her. They could’ve just killed her to get to us. They could’ve done anything to her… They could still be doing anything to her.”

Steve tries to tell her something that might help, but he doesn’t know what. This all is hard on him too, but he can’t even begin to imagine what all this is doing to her. All he can do is do his best to get Alex back as soon as possible. So he takes off his jacket, slips out of his shoes and leaves his gun on the heap before he takes out his phone, turns on the flashlight and jumps head first into the river before Natasha could.

He has to look around for a moment, but then he sees a car. Upon diving deeper he sees it’s the car that took Alex. Steve prays to pretty much every single god that he knows of that it’s empty. When he looks inside he nearly sighs of relief until he remembers he’s underwater. There’s nobody inside. He opens the door and after looking around inside, he eventually finds Alex’s phone on the ground. He keeps looking around – thank the serum for his lungs – but finds nothing, the car’s been stripped clean except for the phone.

So he swims back up again, immediately shaking his head to let Natasha know Alex isn’t down there. He can see her sigh in relief as he climbs back out of the water.

                “Their car was down there, but it’s stripped clean, nothing but her phone in there” he says, handing her the dripping and, for now at least, broken phone.

                “Thank you” she whispers. “Can you tell the others?”

                “Of course.”

Steve squeezes her shoulder comfortingly before stepping aside to tell the others what they found and plan the next step.

Natasha clutches the phone in her hands like her life depends on it. It kinda does. She doesn’t think she can handle losing her daughter. Not after everything, not ever. She spent the past sixteen years in constant fear someone might take her daughter from her and not ever could she have imagined it to feel like this. She already hates every second of this. She knows she can’t do this for long. She’s just lost Clint and a month later her daughter gets kidnapped while walking home from school. How could she ever be so selfish and think this could work? How could she ever think her family was safe?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/set?.locale=de&id=188730527


	5. Goodbye stranger

What is happening? I… I can’t breathe. Everything’s dark and I don’t know where I am and I don’t think I’m breathing. I can’t be sure, though. So… am I dead or what? Is that what’s going on here? I’m dead? Shit.

I don’t know where I am but I can’t even begin to panic when someone touches my face. Okay, guess I’m not dead. But what the hell is going on.

I don’t know how long it takes, but at some point I manage to somewhat open my eyes. When I do blink them open, at first I can’t see anything. Wherever the hell I am, it’s damn bright. It takes some time for my eyes to adjust, but once they do, I blurrily see a guy moving in front of me. He’s got a camera in his hands.

Okay, now I’m starting to panic.

I can’t move. I can barely lift a finger, what the hell did they do to me?

He moves then, crouching down in front of me when he sees I’m awake, and moves my face down a bit, my right arm up and my legs are moved this and that way.

                “Don’t move” he says, his voice calm and quiet and really fucking creepy.

I want to speak, but I can’t make a single noise, I can’t even move my head enough to try and bite his hand when he touches my face. I can’t do anything but watch as he does whatever the hell he’s doing.

With every click of the camera, with every little ‘adjustment’ he makes, I panic more until I can’t stop myself from crying. It’s the only thing I can do right now and I’ve never felt more helpless in my life, I don’t know where I am and I don’t know why this guy is taking photos of me in… gold shorts and a barely closed blouse… what the fuck are they doing?

My breath hitches when he stops taking photos and instead stomps down in front of me, making me flinch before he starts yelling at me.

                “Stop screwing these up!”

So I make myself take deep breaths, at least as deep as possible, to calm down somewhat. I don’t want him to get his rage on when I can’t even move.

He takes some more photos, but he’s getting increasingly more frustrated and I don’t know what to do, I’m not moving but apparently I’m messing everything up by being awake.

Before he can try to knock me out again though, a woman walks into the room, looking at the computer screen.

                “Here goes nothing” the man tells her, frustrated, lowering the camera.

                “I think we have a few good ones” she says after a moment, showing him something on the screen, both completely ignoring the kidnapped girl lying on the floor. “Not as great as the ones we sent her family…” wait, what? How long have I been here? “You’re done here, Mark” she tells him, a small, grateful seeming smile on her face, but her voice leaves no room for argument. Mark, apparently, nods his head and starts putting his gear away, while the woman leaves the room for just a moment before she comes back with another guy.

I couldn’t see it before, but as she comes closer to me, it dawns on me that this is Amilia Postma, head of ‘wij nemen’. Fuck.

There’s a new wave of panic rising up in me when she stands in front of me. She doesn’t talk, just looks down at me before nodding to the man beside her.   
He crouches down then, slips one arm underneath my knees and the other one under my shoulders and lifts me up.   
I can barely breathe because I’m seriously panicking right now, but I still can’t make a sound as he carries me out of this photo studio and into another, much bigger room, making my heart basically jump out of my chest.

The whole room is filled with dirty mattresses, barely any space left between them, just enough for one person to walk through. On top of every single mattress lays a girl or a boy. Really, it’s almost only kids, I think I’m one of the oldest in here, from what I can tell. I can see a little girl that looks to be about Lucy’s age. I wanna cry even more.

A few of them are looking at me, but most of them seem to be completely out of it, attached to an IV. There are some with a tube in their nose, though I don’t know why.

The man carrying me lays me down on one of the few empty mattresses, this one marked with the number 42, next to two boys, twins, looking to be about the age of Mason and Vic… fuck, are they doing this on purpose?

I don’t know where he got that from all of a sudden, but though I still can’t move, I feel the needle in the back of my hand as the man attaches an IV to me.

                “Wha- What is this?” I finally manage after I don’t know how many tries.

The man ignores me.

                “Gimme a hand here, 33 got an overdose” another man in the room calls out, causing the one beside me to walk across the room towards the girl writhing on the ground in a seizure.

It’s getting continuously harder to breathe as I watch the man walk between the mattresses, getting blurrier with every second until I can’t see him anymore and I pass out again.

* * *

 

Alex is gone for almost two months now. The only thing keeping Natasha somewhat sane is the fact that they’ve been getting close so many times already. But they just never got close enough. They’ve been tracking signals all over the world, took the jet to so many places already but every time they arrived the people that took Alex were already gone again. It’s frustrating, but nobody is stopping, they all wanna keep the search going until they found her, no matter what. They will not stop, not until they found her, whether she’s dead or alive… of course nobody allows themselves to be thinking about the fact that she could be dead. She’s alive until proven otherwise, that’s what keeps them going.

They involved SHIELD right on day one, but they don’t seem to find anything either.

The whole month after Alex’s birthday, Natasha felt like every day was the worst of her life, she didn’t know how to keep going after Clint’s death. She still doesn’t.

But then exactly a month after his death was confirmed, her daughter gets kidnapped. And every day since feels like her whole world is collapsing over and over again with every step she takes. She knows she won’t be able to handle having lost both of them.

After Alex went missing, Tony immediately kept the other kids out of school, Peter too, as they couldn’t be sure if these people would try to get anyone else too. For the time of their search being, Tony had them all more or less homeschooled, though it was obvious none of them would and could concentrate on any kind of school work when Alex was gone. But Tony just wanted to be sure, raising the security standards for his family so there wouldn’t be any more harm done than has already been done.

But really, the worst day of their search happened when Alex was gone for just over a month. This day might have been even worse to Natasha than being told her daughter has been taken in the first place.

They’ve all been down in the lab, pretty much everyone stuck in front of a computer screen. The only ones not there were James and Lucy, which, in retrospect, was a good thing. Even Peter was here – he barely left the tower anyways.

So, they were all trying to track down the latest signal or find any kind of clues, when the big screen in the middle of the room suddenly came to live, showing nothing but a photo. A photo that knocked the breath out of everyone.

To be seen was Alex, exactly the way they’ve all last seen her. The same clothes, the same hair style, the same Alex. Except for that one little detail: her slit throat. Blood was everywhere, oozing out of the cut, smeared on her neck and chin and cheek, her hands, the top of her shirt completely soaked in blood as she stares at the camera with dead eyes.

Everyone was silent in shock, at least half of the people in the room were crying once they saw the photo, but Natasha was completely quiet. Her eyes were wide and she found it _very_ difficult to breathe. Every bit of training inside her completely left when she saw her daughter again. While everybody else kept on looking, she turned away.

                “Track this” she muttered, her voice steady but quiet, numb, but in the silence of the room everybody heard her. All eyes followed her as she made her way towards the balcony, slowly, like in a trance, still trying to get some air into her lungs. She was barely aware of Pepper following her at a distance, just focusing on walking and breathing. When she pushed open the door and stepped outside, the cold air automatically flooded her lungs and she just gasped as she gripped the railing so tight it hurt her hands. She starred down at the city, everybody going along with their business like usual, while she kept gasping for breath, Pepper standing a bit behind her, trying to control her tears.

                “Natasha…” she whispered so quietly it went past her unheard. All Natasha could hear was the blood rushing in her ears as she just couldn’t stay standing. She slowly slid to her knees, her hands still grasping the cold metal of the railing. Pepper kneeled down behind her, her hand on her back because she simply didn’t know what else to do. Natasha just kept staring ahead as she rested her forehead against the glass portion of the railing. Her breath fogged up the glass, but she still felt like she was suffocating. There was such a weight on her chest like she’d be lying underneath a car.   
She wasn’t even crying, but she was losing it. She was losing everything.

* * *

 

I’m dying. I’m suffocating. There’s something stuck in my throat and I can’t get it out because I can’t move. The only thing I can do is gasp and stare at the dirty ceiling until someone steps in my line of vision, a man, but not the one that took the photos or that laid me on this mattress. I panic even more when he reaches down to my face and he pulls a tube out of my nose.

I almost throw up when he does that.

I just lay here, coughing and gasping until I calmed down somewhat, my head rolling to the side, where I look into the scared eyes of a boy.

                “ _Die ernähren uns damit_ ” I can hear him say quietly, but I have no idea what that means.

“What?” I struggle to speak, but eventually I manage. He looks at me for a second before clarifying in English.

“They feed us with that.”

It still takes me a while to get. Of course they have to feed us somehow, they’re keeping us alive after all but if we’re knocked out most of the time, we can’t eat on our own.

                “What’s your name?” he asks then.

                “Alex.”

                “I’m Robin.”

                “Is that your brother?” I whisper, referring to the boy lying to the left of me. He nods his head as best as he can.

                “His name is Felix.”

                “Where are you from?” I ask him, trying to actually keep my mind off these things here for just a second. He tells me they’re from a little town in Germany. When he asks me where I am from and I tell him I’m from New York, his green eyes grow wide and he actually smiles a little.

                “Really? I always wanted to go there… what is it like? Have you ever seen an Avenger?” he looks so excited and I have to smile.

                “My parents are Avengers.” I have to grin at the shocked expression on his face.

                “Really? They will be looking for you, right?” he asks, looking at me hopefully. I just nod my head. I know they are.

                “How long have you been here?” I ask then.

                “I don’t know. A while. But I think not as long as you.”

                “What do you mean? They just put me here yesterday” I don’t even know if it was yesterday that they took the photos. Robin shakes his head.

                “They keep us sleeping. You were awake a couple of times but I don’t think you remember that.” I don’t. Fuck. So how long have I really been here when they keep us drugged up the whole time? I could be here for a year already, as far as I know.

I force myself to take a deep breath before I could panic again.

                “My family is gonna get us out of here, Robin. I swear. ”

                “You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep, kid” a woman says, appearing out of nowhere in front of our mattresses. It’s Postma and across the room I can see a woman with short, green hair walking across the room. She’s got a scar that goes from her chin across her jaw to end at the back of her ear and from the SHIELD files I know this is Lennja Mol, wij nemen’s torture specialist. Shit.

                “Your family won’t be looking for you anymore, not after the nice photos we sent them.” I assume she doesn’t mean the ones I remember being taken. “Which is a pity for you, really. They were getting _so_ close. And then they just stop. Guess you don’t mean so much to them after all.” She waves Mol towards us.

                “Honey, would you please take care of 41? His deal’s blown and I have absolutely no use for him anymore, I’ve got another kid coming in so I need the mattress” Postma says to Mol, who nods, pulls a gun from her waistband and shoots Robin in the head before anyone could even blink.

I hear myself screaming. I hear a boy screaming and I remember Felix is lying on the other side of me. I’m glad, this way he at least doesn’t see all of this. But I do. All I can do as tears already start streaming down my face is stare at the blood and chunks of brain spread across the mattress, the hole in Robin’s forehead, and his eyes staring at the ceiling.

I find myself sobbing and barely able to breathe. Someone just got shot in front of me. A kid just got _killed_ right in front of my eyes. And I couldn’t do anything. All I still can do is watch. Watch as the two women walk away again, watch as a man picks Robin’s corpse up and walks out of this room, watch the blood dry and watch as they put a girl my age with blue hair and the word ‘Mom’ tattooed on her left hand on the bloody mattress next to me. Watch as they hook me back up to the IV and I lose consciousness again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/set?.locale=de&id=189434279


	6. Under new ownership

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: slight mentions of rape

The first thing I notice is that it’s much warmer than before. The second thing is that I’m no longer lying on my back, but instead sitting in a chair. When I open my eyes I realize it’s a big armchair. Before the panic can rise, I take deep breaths, willing my heart to slow down again. After a moment I start looking around. Right in front of me is a big wooden door, to my left is a window that I can’t look through from my position. When I look over my right shoulder I can see a big bed and I doubt I wanna end up on that. I keep taking slow, deep breaths as I look down at myself and I’m seriously just confused about where the hell I am. I’ve been put into a tight skirt and a very showy shirt, high heels and about a ton of jewelry. At least I can move again. Nothing’s numb anymore, I can move my hands and feet and so I decide to try and get up. It takes a while. For one because I suck at high heels, I’m not Torunn. The other reason is that I can’t even remember when the last time was that I stood up. I mean, I probably do remember the day, it’s just that I don’t know how much time’s passed since then. Still, eventually I manage to stand on slightly shaking legs and the first thing I do is look out of the window. There’s a pool? There’s a pretty big pool down there and the rest of the property is fenced in from what I can tell. Behind the fences is nothing. Dry ground, grass, a few trees maybe, but nothing else. And it’s damn bright outside.

I have absolutely no idea where I am.

I turn away and walk to the door. By the time I work up the courage to reach out for the handle, it moves before I can even touch it and the door swings open. The first thing I see is a gun pointed at my face, before the man holding it steps into the room.

                _“Sit”_ he says in Russian.

I don’t really dare to do anything else, so I move back to the chair and sit down. As soon as I do, he glares at me for a moment before backing back out of the door, locking it behind him. Okay, so what, am I in Russia? I don’t know what to do but wait. Eventually the door opens again and a tiny, bald, fat man around fifty, reeking of cigars and alcohol walks through, a sly smile on his face when he looks at me.

                _“Hello, Aljona”_ he says, his voice rough and deep and fucking creepy. I just look up at him as he stops in front of me, regarding me carefully. _“You’re probably wondering who I am, yes? My name is Alexej Bolschakow.”_

I take another deep breath. Just stay calm. I don’t dare asking why he calls me Aljona.

                _“Where am I?”_ I ask instead, doing my best to keep my voice somewhat steady. He just grins.

                _“You’re at my home, of course.”_ Yeah, and where’s that? “ _You know, my dear”_ he says then, laughing. _“He almost got you.”_

 _“Who?”_ I look at him confused. Who’s he talking about? I try to keep him talking. As long as he’s talking he can’t be doing much.

                _“Ah, this Koslow guy or whatever his name is”_ he says, waving a hand dismissingly. I don’t know who that’s supposed to be. I don’t think I ever heard my parents talk about him. _“But! This time I had the better offer”_ he says, looking smug and really proud of himself and I wanna smack that stupid grin off his face. _“Although I think I have spent more than enough time waiting for you._ ” His voice drops as he says this. Something in the way he looks at me changes and he’s getting creepier with every second. No.

                _“Stop”_ I say as demanding as possible when he starts touching my face.

                _“Aljona”_ he sighs, still smiling. _“You are my property. You’re in no position to make demands.”_

Fuck that.

When he moves his finger over my lip, I bite him. I bite until I taste blood and he manages to step back, holding his bleeding hand. I stand up then, but before I can do anything like try for the door, he turns and backhands me and due to the high heels I just can’t keep my balance and I fall to the floor. Fuck, that hurt.

                _“You fucking whore!”_ he screams and grabs for my leg, trying to force them apart, but I kick him in the chest as hard as I can and I never thought I would ever be glad for wearing high heels. But hell I am right now. He falls on his back and holds his hand over a bloody spot on his white shirt right above his sternum. I get up and walk over to him, slamming my foot down hard on his chest, causing him to wheeze and curse me some more and for another bloody spot to appear. But when I try to walk past him, he grabs for my ankle and if it weren’t for these shoes I’d be alright, but this way I’m hitting the floor again.   
He tries to get on top of me, but I kick him in the stomach and pull his arm out from underneath him and so I manage to pin him to the ground, throwing a punch at his throat.

I don’t plan on stopping, but when there’s a sudden sting in the side of my neck, I’m starting to get dizzy within seconds. The man who previously pointed his gun at me pulls me off Bolschakow, an empty syringe still in his hand.

It’s barely registering that he’s putting me on top of the bed and cuffing my right wrist to the bedpost. While everything around me starts spinning and blurring, I can just so see the two of them leaving the room before I pass out again.

* * *

When I wake up, the first thing I see is a gun. The second thing is Bolschakow holding the gun, sitting next to the bed and looking at me weirdly. I don’t move. I couldn’t really move anyways, still handcuffed to the bed, but I don’t even try. I just look at him.

                _“My dear”_ he starts in Russian, his voice sounds strained and his neck is bruised where I hit him. _“I assume you regret what you’ve done?”_ I don’t. I regret not having worked up the courage to just kill him right then. But my current situation doesn’t exactly allow for me to tell him to go fuck himself, so I nod my head slowly, still looking at him. I’ve got to be smart about this.

_“Then I shall be willing to ignore this. I figured you were just scared and… overwhelmed with this situation and I am sure something like this will never happen again, yes?_

Again, I nod my head. Yeah, I’m scared. I’m scared shitless. But like hell am I gonna let this motherfucker rape me. That won’t happen. It won’t.

                _“And I am sure, my dear Aljona, you will be obedient, right?”_

                _“Right_ ” I say slowly. My gaze follows as he stands up and tugs the gun back behind his pant’s waistband.

                _“Excellent”_ he says, causing me to flinch when he claps his hands together. He then pulls a key from his pocket and unlocks the cuffs and I just now realize that my wrist really hurts from being in this position for I don’t know how long.

                _“If you would follow me now?”_

I look at him for just a second longer before I get up and out of the bed. He leads me out of the door. To my left is just one door, but he leads me to the right. On both sides of me are three doors each, one of which leading to the room I just came from. We walk to the end of the hallway, which is littered with guards, where we reach the stairs. We completely ignore the floor underneath and just walk down to the next floor. When we step away, I can see through a glass door on the other side of the huge room and see the pool. The other little detail that I notice are the five girls sitting in the room, their backs straight and all pressed into way too tight and short outfits, like I’ve been. They all look at me.

                _“Girls, this is your new sister, Aljona. Show her around”_ he tells them, the hand he put on my back sliding dangerously low as he turns to leave.

Nobody else is in this room, but outside the glass door is at least one guard and I bet in front of the other door leading out of this room stands one as well.

I don’t really know what to do, at least not until the Japanese girl motions for me to sit.

                “I… I’m Alex, actually” I say after a moment and the others start introducing themselves then.

The girl next to me is twenty-three, from Tokyo and her name’s Ruma. Next to her sits Neele, she’s from a little town near Amsterdam and she’s only thirteen years old. Fuck. The other girls are Sofie, eighteen, from Munich, Geneviève, twenty and from somewhere in western France. The last one is Irina, fifteen years old and from Moscow.  

                “I’ll show you around” Ruma tells me, getting up and so I follow her through the door into a kitchen, where a guard is sitting at the table, looking at us. When she figures there’s not really anything to show me here, we get back and walk through the glass door. God, it’s really hot outside…

The guard standing next to the door looks at us, but he doesn’t follow us as we walk around the pool slowly.

                “There’s not really anything to show you” she says after a second. “We live on the second floor, the first one we’re not allowed on.”

                “How long have you been here?” I ask her because she seems so indifferent to all this, for some reason. She shrugs a little.

                “I don’t know, I lost track… But I’ve been here for a long time. Longer than the others.” Shit.

                “Were… were you the first one?”

                “No. There were a lot of other girls when I came, but he just grew bored of them. They were getting too old for him. He’d always tell them he’d bring them to one of his other mansions, but that was just a lie. He’d drive them somewhere and kill them, because they got too old for him or they tried to defend themselves… One girl got pregnant… He got so mad, he just shot her in front of everybody else.”

                “Holy shit…” is really the only thing I can come up with. This is just sick.

We walk some more around the pool and when I’m sure the guard won’t hear us, I tell her what I’m thinking.

                “This guy is a sick bastard. But we could get out of here! I know how to fight, I could show you all and we could get out of here!”

                “Nobody gets out of here. Sooner or later we’ll all be too old or too defensive or just not pretty enough for him and he will kill us. At least then this nightmare will end.”

                “Don’t say that! I’m serious, this could work!”

                “There are guards everywhere, you wouldn’t even be able to show us.” After a moment she adds something else, quietly. “We saw what you did to him earlier. You’re brave, but… this is stupid. You keep fighting him and one day he’ll win… or he’ll just take you to his ‘other mansion’ as well. The only way to stay alive here is to stop fighting him.”

With that she walks back into the house.

* * *

Ruma turns out to be right – there’s no way we’d ever be alone long enough for me to show them anything. There’s constantly someone with us. So, that’s not gonna get us out of here. But her words keep ringing in my ears. I’m fucking scared.   
The only thing keeping me from completely losing it here is the fact that I know my family’s looking for me. They’ve got to. Even if they think I’m dead, they’ll still track down these people and make them pay. So I gotta keep it together until they find us. Which is seriously hard.

I _have_ to dress up the way he wants me to. Which proves to be rather difficult because usually my ‘styling’ consists of putting on some comfortable clothes and tying back my hair more often than not. So I really am completely lost and I’m pretty sure if it weren’t for the other girls he’d already killed me. They help me look ‘pretty’ for him which in turn keeps him from beating or raping me. Well, at least for the first couple of days. He said he’d let me get ‘accustomed’ to everything. Yeah, right.

I kinda completely blew it though when I got my period. But fuck I don’t think I actually ever was happy to have my period. He just happened to hear me talk to Irina, who asked me what was wrong and I told her that I had cramps. Next thing I knew he was slapping me so hard I fell to the floor again. He kept yelling something about how disgusting I am and he locked me into ‘my’ room for the next couple of days. Sorry for being born with self-shedding organs, fucker. But at least I was safe from him for the next few days. Even if I was going insane locked up in this room for days, it was better than having to be constantly scared of him. Still, I kept pacing around, talking to myself and mostly crying until I could barely breathe because I’m _fucking_ scared. I just wanna get home.

So, anyways, after he finally let me out again, he apparently had missed me so much that he didn’t wanna leave my side at all.   
He tried to rape me. _Tried_. He didn’t even get to open one button on his shirt. I fought back. I fought back like hell and I nearly got him, I almost could’ve knocked him out or even kill him, but his guards beat me up some more instead. But thankfully he wasn’t ‘in the mood’ anymore after that and left, but later that night I could hear Neele cry next door.

The next day Geneviève helped me cover up the bruises and the black eye he gave me, and this shit-fest continued for the next couple of days until today, when one of the guards leads me out of the house.

                “ _Where are we going?”_ I ask, the things Ruma told me that first day still echoing in my head.

_“We’re taking you to his other mansion.”_

Fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/set?.locale=de&id=189788950


	7. Madagascar

They’ve got her. They’ve got Postma. They know where she is. After completely forgetting about Jane, Torunn and Tony’s birthdays. After eighteen weeks of searching they finally found her. In a pretty much completely isolated part of Madagascar. Natasha nearly cried of relief, but she forced her training back in place. She wouldn’t cry. Not until she had her daughter back in her arms.

As soon as they found that place they geared up. Torunn was considering tying Peter to the chair so he wouldn’t sneak into the jet as well. He kept trying to come along, he still blames himself for not having fought harder. He and Torunn swore that as soon as Alex was back home they would _actually_ learn how to fight. They can defend themselves to a certain degree, but nothing like Alex.

Alex’s been obsessed with fighting since always. Torunn can’t remember a time that she wasn’t fighting. As soon as she could convince her parents to teach her, Alex would constantly join anyone in the gym. She just loved it. She loved moving, loved exercising, loved the determination that would always come with it, the determination of one day being able to win against her parents. The knowledge that she could defend herself and the people she cared for, that she could protect her siblings and friends. Which she often did, her parents getting a lot of calls from school because Alex was involved in a fight again.

So with this in mind anyone could imagine what kind of people took her, if she couldn’t stop them from taking her. They’re dangerous people, and so the whole team gears up, carrying a bunch of weapons and ammo into the jet before saying their quick goodbyes and taking off.

They’re missing their pilot. Of course Steve and Tony both can fly the jet, as can Natasha if she has to, but not as well as Clint. If they’re being shot at they might run into trouble. But for now they’re good.

Well, as good as they can be.

They’ve got a long flight ahead, even with the jet, and they’re all anxious, nervous and just hoping they’re not too late yet. Once in a while someone back at the tower can be heard throughout the jet’s intercom, but they’re not really talkative either. Everyone’s on edge to finally find something, hoping they find Alex. When they eventually reach the island, they land a small distance away from the location.

“I think I should stay behind until you give me the okay. I don’t think the big guy will be needed in there. People could be needing _my_ help” Bruce says as the others take their weapons and Tony gets into his suit. The others agree with him and so they tell the rest back home that they’re going in now and leave the jet with Bruce, who stays on the line just as the ones in the tower do.

                “Tony, what do you see?” Steve asks after Tony flew ahead a minute ago.

                “Warehouse, got a couple guards outside. How are we gonna go about this? Gonna be sneaky or give ‘em a booming hello?”

                “I’m voting for the hello” Thor grumbles before he starts swinging his hammer and takes off as well, clearly starting the hello.

The others follow, running until they reach the house where Thor and Tony are already done fighting off the few guards. But more run out of the building then and so they all start fighting their way inside the warehouse.

Natasha is working her way inside while the others are busy with the guards. She’s taking one out herself, flinging herself on his shoulders and snapping his neck this way, when she sees a woman with green hair running past, a machine gun in her hands.

Natasha follows the woman she immediately recognized as Lennja Mol. She looks over her shoulder as she pushes through a door, leading Natasha in a room that is set up like a photo studio before she pushes open another door. Natasha finds herself standing in a room filled to the brim with mattresses, all of which are occupied by mostly knocked out kids.

Mol stops running when she’s in the middle of the room and she turns around to look at Natasha, who in turn is staring in shock at what she’s seeing, while simultaneously trying to find her daughter in this hell.

Mol grins as she pulls the trigger, shooting hundreds of bullets around the room, missing Natasha on purpose, instead hitting the kids around her.

The spy snaps out of it then, raising her glock and shooting the gun from Mol’s hands before putting a bullet into her gut as she screams out.

                “We got injured here” she says in her comm as she runs over to where Mol is lying on the ground, holding her hand – now missing part of her fingers – over the wound in her stomach, still grinning.

                “You’re too late” Mol taunts, blood starting to fill her mouth. “We sold her two weeks ago.”

The others run into the room now too, looking on in shock for a moment before telling Bruce he’s needed and then they start helping the children, trying to find some that are still alive.

                “Where is she?” Natasha asks Mol, her voice steady, calm and quiet as she crouches down next to her. When she doesn’t answer, Natasha presses into the wound in her gut, causing her to scream out and cough up more blood as Natasha repeats her question, still in the same cold, demanding tone. But Mol just laughs. And Natasha’s losing her patience. She pulls out a dagger then and stabs it into the wound, twisting it around and pushing the bullet deeper, causing Mol to cough up more blood as she cries out. Natasha repeats herself again, emphasizing each word with a twist of the knife, but Mol stays silent.  

                “Where is she?!” she yells when the woman’s eyes start to close. Natasha pulls the knife back out and stabs her repeatedly, yelling at the now _dead_ woman over and over until Thor is the one to pull her away, holding her as she cries, drops the knife and stares at her blood covered hand.

Everything’s gone. Everything she’s ever been told, her whole life, all her training of keeping her emotions out of her life, it’s all gone. As is Clint. Clint’s gone. The one person that still believed in her when no one else did, who thought she deserved a second chance, who saved her life in so many more ways than just one. He’s gone. He’s gone and so is their daughter. Their daughter is _gone_. Gone without a trace. She failed. She failed everything. All she ever could was keep herself alive. She couldn’t keep Clint alive and she couldn’t keep her own daughter alive. She’s getting everyone close to her killed. It’s just a matter of time until the others suffer because of her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/set?.locale=de&id=190117801


	8. Don't die

I’m fucked.

That’s pretty much the only thought on my mind. I’m gonna die now. Fuck.

They have cuffed my hands again and put me in a car without another word. Two guards are with me, one of which is driving, the other one is sitting in the backseat next to me. In front of us is the car with Bolschakow and another guard.

I don’t know how long we’re driving already and I have seriously no idea where the hell I am, I don’t even know what continent I’m on. It’s hot and dry and there’s nothing out there, not a single house, nothing.

                “ _You’re not taking me to another house, are you?”_ I hear myself ask, staring at the man beside me.   
When he doesn’t move a muscle, I stare at the reflection of the driver in the rearview mirror.

                “ _No.”_

Fuck.

Okay, calm down. Nothing’s happened yet. Deep breaths. I’m not just gonna give up. I didn’t spent my whole life learning how to fight to just let them kill me now. I can handle this. I can do this. Hell, the least I can do is try. Either I’ll make it or I’ll die anyways. Not much of a choice here.

I take another deep breath and get to business.

Thank god my hands are at least tied in front of me. I grab the guy next to me by the hair and smack his head against the window as hard as I can. I do this three times until there’s blood on the glass and a tiny crack and the guy’s eyes are closed. When I let go of him he slumps forward in his seat, knocked out.

The car has already stopped and the driver is yelling at me in Russian, fumbling for his gun, but I stop him when I put my hands on both sides of his face and pull back, the chain between the handcuffs digging into his neck, choking him. I’m glad they didn’t feel the need to put my seatbelt on when I see him reach out for his gun. I’m still leaning back on my seat but I swing my left foot over the back of his seat, digging the heel of my shoe into his hand, stopping him from grabbing the gun. His right hand scratches mine for a moment.

I have to really lean back with all my weight because else he could pretty much throw me through the windshield. But I hold on and just hope he’ll be knocked out soon enough. I think he is when he stops clawing on my hand, but a moment later he’s pulled a knife from his belt and cuts into my hand. I cry out, but I don’t let go. His other hand is still trying to get out from under my foot but it’s not working, so the next moment the knife cuts into my leg.

Fucking hell, just pass out already!

It takes five more cuts until he eventually can’t hold the knife anymore and a few more seconds until his eyes close and I let go of him.

I don’t give myself any time to catch my breath. I start searching the one beside me for the keys and thankfully they are on him. So I unlock the cuffs and with my hand already on the door, I decide I need to ditch the high heels. I can’t run in those and considering the other car will notice that we stopped I’m pretty sure I’ll need to run.

Just as I slipped out of them, the door opens and before I can react someone is pulling me out of the car by my hair. I’m screaming because shit does that hurt, and I’m struggling to get out of his grip, but the guard just drags me across the hot dirt. He stops then and kicks me in the side. I cry out but fuck I gotta do something.

I roll to the side and get up and do my best to ignore him nearly ripping the skin off my head, instead I manage to grab a hold of a finger of the hand on my head. I pull it back until it cracks and he cries out, letting go of my hair and holding his right hand, his ring finger sticking up in a weird direction. I throw a punch at his throat, causing him to wheeze and clutch at his neck. Then I take a hold of his right arm, twisting it on his back and kicking against the back of his knee so I can hit his head against my knee to knock him out… At least that was my intention.

I just managed to twist his arm, standing behind him, when I hear a gun go off and I hear him cry out, nearly dropping to his knees. I see Bolschakow walking to us, the gun trained at us.

I’m standing behind the guard, but when I next hear the gun, the bullet hits him and it goes straight through.

I can’t even cry out.

The bullet pierces through my side and knocks all air out of my lungs, rendering me breathless. I stumble, both because of the pain and because of the deadweight of a guard starting to fall against me. He takes a few steps, pushing me along but eventually both of our legs give away and we fall down a slope.

I’m crying when I hit the ground, gasping and sobbing because I can’t breathe and there’s a probably dead man lying pretty much on top of me, putting more weight onto my lungs and onto the wound, making the pain in my side even worse. I never thought it would be that bad. My whole body is on fire and I just wanna lay here until it’s over.

Fuck, I can’t breathe.

But the sound of another bullet hitting the ground right beside my neck brings me back to reality. Bolschakow is standing at the top of the slope, but when he realizes he missed me, he starts climbing down. The man on top of me is coughing and wheezing and that’s when I realize he’s one of the guards which means he’s got a gun.

It hurts to move, but I lift my arm and start searching him blindly, my hand getting covered in his blood. By the time I’ve found the gun, Bolschakow is walking towards us, glaring at me. My hand slips multiple times as I try to get the gun out of the holster, but eventually I manage.

I don’t even think about what I’m doing, I just act.

I lift the gun as he steps closer, my hand shaking like crazy.

Fuck.

Bolschakow takes another step, lifting the gun and I pull the trigger. I can’t even look away.

The bullet shoots straight through his neck, causing him to drop the gun, clutch at his neck with both hands and stumble to the ground with wide eyes. Once he does I can’t see him anymore from my position, but I can hear him. He’s gurgling and wheezing and coughing on the blood for minutes. I can’t do anything but listen to these sounds until he finally goes silent.

Oh god.

I just killed someone.

Fuck, I killed someone!

No, he… he deserved it. It’s not like I had any other choice, did I? I’m alive. I did it, I got out of there. I’m alive, so for fuck’s sake get up girl!

I gotta get the fuck up.

But that’s easier said than done with the…corpse lying on top of me. Oh god.

No, I don’t allow myself to panic, I can’t do that right now. I can’t think about this, I can’t think at all, I just gotta act. I gotta get up and find help. I gotta find help and then I get SHIELD or my family to get me and the girls back at the house the fuck out of here. But for that I gotta get up.

I’m screaming as soon as I start moving even the slightest bit, but I have to keep going. I’m forcing myself to push him off me, at least enough for me to get free. It feels like my side is completely tearing apart, but eventually I can pull myself out from underneath him, rolling onto my stomach and screaming even more.

God, it hurts so bad.

I push myself up with shaking arms, crying out as I swear I can feel my side rip apart even more. It takes me a long time until I’m kneeling in the dirt, doing everything I can to take just one decent breath.

I’m feeling horribly sick right now, but I think if I throw up I would just die of pain.

So, after a moment I force myself to look down, the white shirt soaked in blood and covered in dirt. My hands look about the same, both from the cuts I received in the car as well as the guard’s blood. I bite my lip when I start to peel the shirt – still somewhat covering the wound – back and I somehow cry even more when I see the hole bleeding like a waterfall, right above my left hipbone. Fuck, please just don’t have it hit any organs. I whimper when I reach back, trying to find an exit wound but finding none.

Fuck.

I can’t think about it, I can’t! I just need to act. I need to stop the bleeding.

I don’t dare to press my hand against it, I probably already got a ton of dirt in there, no need to make it worse. I slowly turn to my right then, the cuts in my leg burning as they scrape over the ground. I start searching the dead guard beside me. I can’t think about the fact that this is a dead person.

Eventually I find a knife.

First I cut off part of my shirt so it stops being stuck in the wound. Then I cut off the man’s shirt sleeve, stopping myself from looking at him. I take off my belt (thank god I got to wear pants today instead of another dress or skirt) and fold the fabric into as small a square as possible. And for the next part I really have to brace myself. Even holding the makeshift bandage over it feels horrible, but holding it in place with the belt is a thousand times worse. And I have to pull it tight because I have to put some pressure on it to at least reduce the bleeding.

But fuck. I’m screaming when I do this and I honestly can’t breathe for minutes. But when I hear a car door open, I scramble to reach for the bloody gun next to me and simultaneously try to get up when I see the guard whose head I hit against the window appear at the top of the slope, his own gun aiming at me already.

It’s not even a decision when I lift the gun and shoot him in the chest. I watch as he tumbles down the slope until he lays motionless on the ground. I keep the gun in my hand, the other one covering the ‘bandage’ as I get up on shaking legs. I take a few steps away from my own puddle of blood to take a look around. There are three bodies lying around me. Bolschakow’s head is lying in a puddle of his own blood and honestly, he deserved it.

Fuck, what do I do now?

I look around and soon find that there’s no way for me out of here without climbing back up the slope. And I think I could have better chances in a car so I actually decide to get back up there, even if it means I might have to shoot another one, if the last guard wakes up.

So I tug the gun into the waistband of my shorts and stumble on.

It’s not very steep, but every single second of dragging myself up this slope hurts like hell and I scream pretty much the whole way up, dragging my cut legs through even more dirt and scratching them and my arms open even more, but I barely notice that. My whole focus is on getting up there without passing out. And that turns out to be harder than I thought.

But eventually I manage to get up there and immediately collapse again, thankfully with enough mind to it that I lay on my back instead of my side. I give myself one minute to catch my breath as best as I can. One minute. Then I get up again.

I pull out the gun because I don’t know what to expect as I walk to the now empty car, but when I look through the windshield of the car I was in, the man on the driver’s seat is still slumped there the way I left him, making me question if he’s actually still alive or not. I tell myself he is and walk the distance to the other car. I couldn’t stand knowing I killed another one.

When I reach the car I open the door, pulling myself into the driver’s seat. Thank fucking god it’s not manual. Now some tears are actually because I’m glad and not just scared and panicking and in pain. I can drive this. Somewhat. I’m already gonna be confused as hell because the steering wheel is on the right side, but at least I can get it to move.

I don’t have my license yet, but one day when Tony got bored of (for some reason) watching me do my homework, he decided to teach me how to drive. It… didn’t work that well, but a couple weeks later I tried again with my Mom and yeah, I’m no good in city traffic like there is in New York, but wherever the hell I am right now is pretty deserted, so I should be good. Not like I had any other choice. I rather drive than walk.

So I put the gun on the passenger seat, take a not so deep breath, start the engine and get the hell out of here.

I drive for I don’t even know how long when I start to get even more lightheaded and dizzy and tired. The DIY-bandage is soaked by now and it all just hurts, every single breath hurts.

And then I run out of gas.

I… I can’t even really react to it, I’m just done. Done with everything, I just want this to be over. I feel like I’m in a totally fucked up movie at this point. I just wanna get back home.

But I won’t if I don’t get up now. I know that.

So I take the gun, get out of the car, hold my hand over my side and start walking. I have seriously no idea how long I walk. Really. It feels like ages and with every step I take I get closer to collapsing again. And I’m really just considering giving up, lying down in the dirt and never getting up again. But I can’t do that. And I won’t. I will get home. I will survive this. I didn’t survive the past two weeks for nothing, didn’t survive Postma’s drug-induced coma for nothing. And I sure as hell didn’t just get shot for nothing. I didn’t kill three people just so I can lay down and die now. I won’t let this happen. I’m gonna go back home, back to my Mom, back to my family. I didn’t go through all of this just so I could give up now.

So I keep going. I keep pushing myself up this hill, even though my legs are shaking like crazy, even though I can barely breathe and even though I’m bleeding out. I keep going.

My hands are getting numb and the gun slips out of my hand, sliding down the hill a little bit. My gaze follows it, but I really don’t even think about picking it up again. I just keep walking.

When I reach the top of the hill I’m crying even more.

Right at the foot of it are the first shacks of what looks like a slum. Which means people. Which means help. Which means I’m gonna make it and get home. But of course that’s when I’m passing out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/set?.locale=de&id=190498478


	9. Some luck for a change

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Slight mentions of rape

I wake up to a searing pain in my side and I start screaming before I can even open my eyes. Once I do look around, I have absolutely no idea where the hell I am. I’m lying in a little shack, on a mattress that’s more like a blanket and hovering above me is a boy that looks to be about my age… he looks Indian, so what, I’m in India? Fuck, I don’t care where the hell I am, I just want this pain to stop. I look down myself as good as I can, seeing a man kneeling next to me, soaking a rag in… I don’t know if it’s water or alcohol, but I seriously hope it’s not the latter. Across the small room is a woman making tea I think, at least from the smell of it. There’s also a little boy and girl standing next to her, staring at me. When I look to my left, there’s a curtain that apparently serves as a door with a bunch of people constantly poking their heads in, but another woman in the room keeps ushering them back outside.

I take as deep a breath as I can when I realize the boy talking some language I don’t understand a word of is talking to me.

                “What?” I ask and my voice sounds hoarse, cracking on just one word.

                “He asked for your name” the man next to me clarifies as he feels around my back for an exit wound. There isn’t one, but this still already hurts like hell.  

                “Alex” I say through gritted teeth.

                “Alex, I will clean your wound now” he says and I figure he’s gotta be some kind of doctor. Or at least someone who seems to know what he’s doing. I nod my head, bite my lip and brace myself for what’s to come, grabbing the boy’s hand he offers me.

I scream. Fuck, he’s killing me.

Maybe what he washed the rag in was water, but what he just _poured_ straight into the wound definitely wasn’t. It burns like hell, I don’t know if it would feel any worse if he just set the whole thing on fire. I have no idea when it starts to hurt less, but when it does, he’s already lit a candle and is now holding some rusty tweezers over the flame, while the woman hands me a cup of tea, talking rapidly in Hindi I assume.

                “Drink, it helps with the pain” the doc translates for me again and though I have trouble keeping it down, I drink the whole thing, nearly puking when I’m done. It takes about a minute until whatever the hell I just drank starts kicking in – I feel myself getting even more lightheaded, breathing becomes a little bit easier and the burning in my side might just ease up a little bit as well.

Well, until he places his hand on my stomach to keep me still. That part already hurts and he’s not even touching the wound yet.

                “I will take out the bullet now” he says and starts digging around in the wound with the meagerly sterilized tweezers and I’m pretty sure this is going to kill me.

I’m screaming and crying and I’m pretty sure I’m crushing the boy’s hand, but how the hell could I care when there’s a stranger digging around inside my abdomen with some rusty tweezers? It feels horrible and I seriously think I’m gonna die before he finishes, but then he pulls the tweezers back out and with them a bloody bullet. He looks at it for a moment before he simply drops it to the ground, putting the tweezers down again.

I close my eyes as I let my breathing slow down, waiting for the pain in my side to return to the, after this, bearable seeming burning I seemed to have gotten used to.

I feel a warm trickle of blood running down my side, looking down at myself I can’t help but cry some more when I see the hole ripped into my body without the shirt and dirt and more blood covering it. About the only clear thought in my head is me hoping like hell that it didn’t hit any organs. I don’t know how long I’ll be stuck in here, I don’t think having internal bleeding would be a great thing right now.

                “I will stitch it up now” the man says then, showing me a needle and thread he’s holding in his hand. Oh, fuck. “Or you’ll be losing too much blood.”

Yeah I know that. I nod my head, take a deep but shaky breath, clutch the boy’s hand again and just close my eyes against the pain of a needle pushing through my skin and muscle and back out and right back in again. I count eight stitches. When he’s done, he wipes over the wound with a soaked rag, causing the whole thing to burn like hell again.

After a few more moments the man then covers the wound with another, folded rag which he tapes to my skin with some not quite as sticky duct tape. Guess that’s about the only bandage they got.

The woman hands the boy next to me another steaming cup, talking to him again in a completely foreign language to me.

                “Drink this and rest” the man tells me, sorting his things. Guess we’re done here, then.

Holy shit.

I’m fucking exhausted.

I killed three men today. Got shot myself and I survived this, I survived getting a bullet taken out by a stranger who might not even be a doctor. While I was completely conscious. But fuck, I got out of there. I got away from that abusive rapist, and I know that he won’t be able to do what he’s done to anyone ever again. Knowing this actually makes all this pain right now bearable, because I know he can’t hurt anyone else anymore. And because I know that I’m gonna get out of here now. I’m gonna get back home.

* * *

I wake up to a little girl jumping onto the bed beside me and hopping onto my back, shaking me.

“Come on, come on, come on!” she keeps squealing. “Wake up! You promised me!”

Ugh, right.

I push my face deeper into the pillow with a groan, but she starts pulling my hair and yelling at me to get up until I finally give in, sitting up and pushing her off my back in the process, having her drop on her back with a grin.

                “I am up, just keep it down, alright?” I mumble, rubbing my eyes and yawning and wondering how the hell she can be so awake at seven thirty am. That’s not human. It’s Saturday, damnit. When I get my eyes open, I look at her, her tiny hands covering her mouth but still giggling.

                “Got your shoes?” I mumble, noticing her bare feet. She seems to think about it for a second before jumping off the bed and running out of the room. While I crawl back under the blanket in denial, I can hear Steve laughing down the hall. Why the hell do I always promise weird shit?

Apparently I dozed off again, cause I get woken up by yet another heart attack caused by a toddler nearly pushing me out of the bed.

                “I’m awake” I groan, but she keeps trying to push me down, insisting that I’m not. So with a groan I roll off the bed, taking her with me until we’re sitting on the floor.

                “Yes I am” I tell her again, to which she just sticks her tongue out at me.

Ten minutes later I actually managed to put on some clothes and brush my teeth. So, walking out of the bathroom with Lucy trailing behind me while I pull my hair into the messiest pony tail I probably ever managed to make in my whole life, we round the corner to see my parents and Steve still comfy in pajamas sipping their coffee and grinning stupidly at me.

For some reason it feels weird to see the four of them together here in front of me, but I don’t really get why.

I just glare at them when Steve hands me the money, having to make sure that Lucy doesn’t take it herself. Instead I take her by the hand and we get into the elevator.

                “See ya!” I hear my Dad chuckle when the doors open.

                “Yeah, we’ll see about that” I mumble, still not awake at all as the doors close again and I just try not to fall asleep standing here. Lucy of course keeps babbling excitedly, waving her giraffe around the whole time.

The first thing I do once we’re out on the street and I made sure Lucy stays by my side, is grab a coffee at the next corner. It doesn’t really help waking me up, though.

Again… why the hell am I doing this?

Eventually after about twenty hours (ten minutes actually) of walking, we arrive at that bakery we were heading to and I immediately manage to lose a two years old in a store as big as my room.

So I start looking for her while simultaneously trying to remember what the hell we were supposed to get for Lucy’s big breakfast that she yesterday randomly decided was going to happen.

Why again did _I_ agree to do that with her? Oh right, I didn’t. I lost at poker… Yeah, cause that’s apparently how we decide who’s doomed to do something that’s inevitably going to suck: we play poker. I’m usually not even bad at it, I just for some stupid reason thought it could work to trick my Mom into thinking I had a good hand. My _Mom._ This would’ve worked with anyone at home, literally _anyone_ but her. So, instead of her doing the breakfast babysitting shopping, it’s me doing this now.

The loud, high pitched scream of my name leads me around the corner, where I see the tiny blonde super-soldier-spawn staring at me with wide eyes and a big jar of cookies in her little hands. Wherever the hell she got that from.

When she starts running towards me I already know this isn’t going to end well.

Though she catches herself in time when she stumbles, she loses her grip on the jar.

I hear her quiet ‘whoopsie’ just before the glass shatters on the floor.

But instead of the shattering sound there’s a breathtakingly loud bang and I’m falling to the floor and I can’t breathe. What the fuck.

I open my eyes and try to take in a breath, but it’s not working. I start coughing up blood and I can’t stop, choking on the blood and I find myself no longer in the little bakery but on sandy, bloody ground… with a dead man sprawled on top of me.

I’m bleeding. There’s a bullet in my gut, blood is filling my mouth like crazy and there’s something metal and hot pressed to my forehead and I look up into Bolschakow’s sweaty face and he pulls the trigger.

The shot is still ringing in my ears when I open my eyes.

…wait. 

I’m breathing. I’m breathing and staring at the ceiling for a moment, catching my breath until it all comes back. Just a dream. Not dead, one bullet wound and I survived that. It’s stitched up and taken care of. I’m alive. I can breathe and I’m not bleeding to death and I’m on fire.

…right… there’s that.

That’s coming back now too, the pain, and I really wish to be back to five seconds ago when I didn’t yet notice it. It hurts so fucking bad. I seriously don’t know how my parents can handle this kind of stuff. I’ve been fighting pretty much my whole life, I think I can say I’ve got a rather high pain tolerance, but _this_? This kind of pain is so much worse than everything, every sprained or broken bone and every punch. This is metal piercing straight through anything, piercing through my skin and muscle, maybe even bones, ripping through my flesh. One little bullet can change everything, can end everything. This little piece of metal can kill you, can just cut you, can hit you, can paralyze you. But not on its own. A single bullet doesn’t do any harm, it’s just a tiny piece of metal sitting in a larger piece of metal sitting in the hands of a person that is either trying to help you or harm you. In my case this person was out to kill me. In my case I was out to kill him before he could kill me.

I wanted to kill him. For what he did to me, but especially to the other girls. He never got to rape me, I never let him. I fought back. I would’ve fought back until he’d kill me before I’d follow Ruma’s advice and just give up. No way I would let that happen. I got beat up plenty, but that’s something I can handle. I know how to take a punch, I can take sprained bones and bruises and black eyes. That’s alright. I would’ve taken any kind of pain before I would let him touch me. But I know I only made him mad. I heard it every night when he finally got too fed up with me and left me locked into my room, bleeding and sobbing. It would only take a few minutes until I could hear one of the other girls scream.

So no, I don’t feel bad about killing him. Not at all. He had this coming.

What I feel bad about is not knowing what’s happening to the other girls now. I can only hope that someone finds Bolschakow and his guards and calls the police and they find the girls and maybe even me. These three shot people could hit the news and Jarvis could find these news and my family could interpret this as something connected to me and they could find me. Or I could get a phone and just - fuck.

Fuck, all I want is for this hell to end. I just wanna get back home. I wanna close my eyes and sleep and when I wake up again I wanna be able to look out of my window onto the city below, get out of my own bed and hug my Mom until I starve. I just wanna be back home.

I find myself starting to cry.

That’s nothing new by now, but it hurts, the sobs wrecking through my body, tearing at my side. I don’t know what gives me the idea to turn onto my right side. I move and just so manage not to scream like crazy again, but I can turn onto my side and curl up somewhat, kind of relieving some pain in my left side. It feels better, if just slightly.

It scares me, but I don’t even have any more strength to flinch when someone pulls a blanket over my shoulders from behind me and runs a hand over my head, resting on my forehead.

I don’t know who it is, but I don’t care.

I’m shivering but sweating at the same time and if I still were in my right mind, I’d know these aren’t good signs after being shot. But I’m tired.

The hand on my head keeps running through my hair, puts a cool and wet towel on my forehead and runs through my hair again, eventually causing me to fall asleep.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/set?.locale=de&id=190824002


	10. Guess who's back

I wake up to the pain of being shot all over again. God, it hurts so bad.

Someone is taking the towel off my head, wetting it and placing it on my forehead again. I open my eyes to look at a woman’s face staring at me worriedly. I don’t even know her name. From what I gathered I’d say she’s the mother of the boy whose hand I probably crushed. I don’t know though.

She pulls the blanket back over my shoulders before the little girl I saw before hands her a steaming cup and looks at me curiously. The woman takes the cup and lifts my head, the movement hurts but it’s bearable. She makes me drink some weird tea again, and it’s burning my mouth, but I force myself to keep it down and not to cough because coughing would be the worst thing to do right now.

I figure it’s the same stuff they gave me when they took out the bullet. I have really no idea what kind of drugs are in this, but I don’t care, not if it makes me feel better even the slightest bit.

The woman lays my head back onto the thin pillow once I drank the whole thing and runs her hand over my head again. I just wish it’d be _my_ Mom holding my hand through all of this, talking reassuring things in Russian and running her hand through my hair. Or my Dad.

But it isn’t either of them because my Mom is on the other side of the planet and my Dad is dead. So I close my eyes and listen to the girl and her mother (I guess) talking in Hindi (again, my guess). I listen to my not quite normal sounding breathing, slowly tuning their talking out, just listening to my breathing and my pulse beating in my ears, definite reassurance that I am alive, no matter how much I might be burning.

I know I’ve got a fever, my eyes are burning, my head’s hot, my side feels like it’s on fire and the rest of me is freezing, shivering. And I know that a fever in this situation doesn’t mean I’ve just got a flu. I know I’ve got an infection, know it before the man or doctor tries to tell me this some time later. I don’t even know when later is. I don’t know how long I’ve been lying here, gotta be probably one or two days at least for me to develop this nice infection. I’m losing track of everything.

I can’t even think about a way to get home, my head is constantly throbbing, feels like it’s about to explode and I seriously can’t make out one decent thought.

I don’t even think I could say anything, at least nothing that’d make sense. I hear myself mumble utter bullshit in a mix of Russian and English once in a while but I have absolutely no idea what I’m saying or to what imaginary person I’m talking to.

The only thing I actually notice is me trying to eat or drink. They keep trying to feed me some bread or bits of rice, as well as more of that tea, but I can barely keep anything down. And that’s the worst part about that – I can’t keep anything down. Which means I’m throwing it back up which means I’m hunching over, tearing at my side. Which means adding to the usual breathlessness of puking is me not being able to breathe at all because it just hurts so unbelievably bad.

But I’ve got to eat if I wanna get better. I know my chances are really not the best. I’ve lost a lot of blood, got an infection and can barely keep anything down which could help me build up some sort of strength again.

The only thing somewhat working for me is drinking, so they give me more and more tea and some soup because that’s really the only thing that I can keep down somewhat, keeping me from starving.

But the only thing that really works for me is sleeping. I gotta say, sleep still is the best medicine. I don’t think I’ve ever slept so much. Though it isn’t as much sleep as it’s passing out from exhaustion or pain, but it helps. I can only feel miserable while I’m awake, right?

And this way I’m not moving around much, which gives the wound some time to start healing as I’m not constantly tearing at it. I feel like the only times I wake up is when they clean the wound again, the pain waking me up every time. And while I am awake they give me something to drink/eat before I pass out again.

But it seems to work. According to the doctor (I’m just gonna assume he is one) my fever broke after three days. But I didn’t feel any better until the fifth day when I could finally understand again what he’s been telling me. I actually manage to eat and keep it down, and I feel like I’m getting better with every passing hour. I still sleep most of the time for the next two days, but I actually manage to sit up on day eight.

My side still hurts, but it’s nothing like before. It’s more like a dull throb by now, at least as long as it’s not touched and I’m not moving.

Holy fucking shit I survived this.

Fuck.

This means I’m getting home. This means I’m getting back home to my family! They could be on their way to me already for all I know. Fuck! I can’t believe I survived this. I kept telling myself I would but I don’t think I quite believed it. The whole situation did look pretty hopeless after all.

I don’t know how long I’ve been gone by now, it feels like it’s been years. This is pretty much the first time in I don’t know how long that I’m safe and that I can think clearly about everything. I didn’t get to think much back at Bolschakow’s, well not until he locked me in my room for eight days straight, there I had plenty of time to think about all this shit. But the rest of the time I was busy keeping him away from me. And then I got shot and nearly died and was delirious for days.

But now I’m fit enough to think about everything. And mainly about my Mom losing everything. She’s lost her husband, her best friend and partner and a month later her daughter gets kidnapped on her way home. What the fuck kind of world is this?

A world in which people can sell kids, a world in which people get to own other people and do whatever they want with them. A world in which a life only has as much worth as the price written on the person’s forehead.

My price must’ve been pretty high. I don’t think Postma would’ve taken all the trouble and risk of kidnapping me and keeping my family off my tracks if I wasn’t worth a whole lot of money to her. The Avengers have enemies. And that’s how you get to them – by taking their children.

This is all kinds of fucked up.

I wanna get back to not thinking about this.

I just wanna get back home already.

* * *

I’ve been told this morning that I’ve been here for ten days now, that’s all the update I can get. I’m getting better and I’m gonna be home soon, that’s all I know, that’s what keeps me from freaking out completely at being stuck in some strange place somewhere on the other side of the world.

I’ve slept most of the day again, around noon or so the woman whose name I still don’t know woke me up to have me eat something before she helped me take a few steps around the room. It feels weird to be walking again after lying for more than a week, but it works surprisingly well and I’m glad. That means I’m gonna be out of here soon.

I’ve slept some more then, but around sunset I wake up because of some big ass commotion outside the shack. There must be a ton of people talking and some are screaming and I don’t know what this means.

Some part of me tells me to ignore it, to stay the fuck where I am and go back to sleep, but I can’t do that. I don’t know why, I really wish I could.

But so I take a deep breath and start sitting up the way I figured out doesn’t hurt that much. I mean, it still hurts like a bitch but it’s better.

I take a moment to just sit so the room stops spinning before I pull myself up by the edge of the table in front of me.

I bite my lip against the pain and brace myself with a hand to the wall, just breathing slowly for a moment against the sick feeling in my stomach and the dizziness before I start walking, one hand still on the wall to brace myself incase I’d stumble.

When I walk out of the ‘door’, I immediately close my eyes against the brightness. Though the sun is setting it’s still awfully bright and burning and really hot compared to my little nest inside the shack.

But after a moment I’ve gotten used to the light and start moving again, letting go of the wall and carefully moving through the rows of people gathered between the rows of houses, all seem nervous and scared.

I don’t think I should be continuing this way, but I still do, even when I hear a few gunshots. People scream, but only for a moment before everything’s quiet and someone speaks up.

                “Where’s the white girl?” I hear a woman yell and I’ve got an awfully bad feeling about this. I stop walking, but I can peek over some of the shoulders in front of me to see Postma and three men with machine guns pointing at the people. The only thing different about her now is her hair, no longer long and brown, but a blonde bob.

She’s not looking in my direction, but she’s searching the crowd, definitely looking for me.

No. Fuck, no I can’t do this again!

I try moving back out of the crowd, but some people are blocking my way, glaring at me. They’re not pushing me to her though, not yet at least.

I can’t make a decision though when I hear another shot going off, followed by more people screaming.

I don’t know why I make myself turn around again. Why?

She shot someone. Because of me.

I find myself not really able to breathe when I see the body of the boy my age lying in a puddle of his own blood.

How did she do this? How did she know he helped me?

His mother, the woman that kept me alive in all this and whose name I _still_ don’t know, screams and kneels down beside her dead son, shaking him and screaming at Postma.

                “Still nothing?”

I can’t move.

The woman’s other son, a small boy about James’ age, runs out of the crowd then and towards his dead brother, but Postma grabs him and presses her gun to his head. The woman is screaming even louder now, lurching at Postma, but a man holds her back.

I’m about to start moving, I really am, when someone grabs me by the arm and pushes me out of the crowd.

She grins when she sees me.

                “Ah, there we go” she says sweetly, looking me straight in the eye, her gun still digging into the crying boy’s head. She smiles at me for a moment.

Then she pulls the trigger.

I scream, but I can barely hear myself over all the other screams around me. I just stare at the dead boy dropping to the ground, a bullet hole ripped through his forehead, his body lying on the dry ground, bits of brain and splatters of blood surrounding him as more blood starts soaking the ground and all that can still be heard is his mother screaming and crying and still struggling against the man holding her.

I only look up when I feel a gun press into the back of my neck.

Postma walks over to me then, only stopping when she’s standing right in front of me, the gun still in her hand. I feel like my heart’s jumping out of my chest right now.

I’m fucking scared, but she doesn’t say anything. Not until she backhanded me at least, nearly knocking me to the ground, but the man behind me keeps me upright by his grip on my hair, forcing me to look at her.

                “Do you have any idea how much I want to kill you right now?” she growls lowly. I can imagine it. “I just wanna rip your stupid fucking head off, cut you into nice little pieces and send you back to your dearest, fucking family piece by piece.”

She slaps me again.

                “They destroyed everything!” she yells then, hitting me once more. By now I’m kneeling on the ground, the gun still against my neck.

                “They killed my wife!” This time she hits me with the gun and I’m long since crying again. I feel blood trickling down my forehead and my vision is getting blurry and I have no idea who her wife is, but she just told me my family managed to track her down. They must be close to finding me! But I know they won’t find me alive. This is it. She’s gonna kill me now. I survived all of this, I was about to get home and now she’s gonna kill me. I waited one day too long.

I close my eyes when she presses the still hot barrel of her gun to my head, more tears joining the trickle of blood down my cheek.

                “You’re not worth all this trouble” she hisses and okay, that’s it. That’s it, I’m dead, I’m fucking dead! Fuck!

                “But lucky you, your money is.”

What?

She slowly pulls the gun away again and takes a step to the side when I open my eyes. Instead of shooting me, she shoots four rounds in the general direction of the two dead boys, hitting their mother and the man holding her back, effectively stopping her screaming and me from breathing.

Four corpses are lying on the ground, solely because of me. I can see the little girl, the boys’ sister, trying to get to her mother, but the woman who’s been ushering people out of the shack that first day holds her back, picking her up and crying herself.

They’re dead because of me.

I can’t breathe and I can barely hear Postma say something about how annoying they all are.

                “Well” she then says, tugging her gun away. “You wanna be rich, you gotta be a bitch, right?”

I can’t look away from their bodies. I got them killed. They saved my live and I got them killed.

The man pressing his gun into my neck yanks on my hair, forcing me to look away and straight ahead. I’m staring at a man walking over to me, stopping once he’s reached me, looking down at me with Postma. He’s wearing a suit, carries a briefcase, got brown hair and looks pretty young, not at all like someone associated with psychopaths like Postma. Bolschakow looked like someone like that. This man doesn’t, but he’s still creeping me the fuck out.

                “She’s injured” he says, the slightest hint of an accent slipping through, but I can’t quite name it. I’m dizzy as hell.

                “She’s alive” Postma counters deadpanned. “She’s still up for your crazy little experiments so give me my money and take her.”

The man nods slowly, eyeing me carefully and I don’t dare looking away. I’m so fucking scared. What experiments is she talking about? Who is this guy?

He takes another moment of just staring at me before he hands her his briefcase. Postma opens it and I can see that it’s filled to the brim with money.

She nods her head then, snapping the case closed again.

                “You better make damn well sure I never see her again. Are we clear?” she snaps, glaring at the man.

                “Of course” he says and nods again, then he waves one of the men towards me as Postma walks away without another word.

                _“Don’t worry, Alexandra”_ he says in perfect Russian. I feel a sting in the side of my neck and my vision is immediately getting even blurrier. _“You won’t have to see her again, I promise you that.”_

Then I pass out again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://www.polyvore.com/alex_reboot_chapter_10/set?id=192799517

**Author's Note:**

> http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/set?.locale=de&id=187321396


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